Political Cinema in Bangladesh: A Dialogue with Third Cinema [1 ed.] 9789849533009

Table of contents :
Political Cinema in Bangladesh: A Dialogue with Third Cinema
Front Cover
Front Matter
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Note from the Director General
Acknowledgement
Preface
Content
Main Text
Chapter One
Introduction
Literature Review
Political Cinema
Counter Cinema
Third Cinema
Militant Cinema
Research Questions
Theoretical Framework
Third Cinema Theory
Framework for Film Analysis
Production
Thematic Issues
Historicity
Politicization
Critical Commitment
Cultural Specificity
Formal Issues
Film Language
Distribution/Exhibition
Methodology
Chapter Two
Historiography of Bangladeshi Politically Informed Cinema
Politically Conscious Fictional Cinema
Kokhono Asheni
Jibon Theke Neya
Abar Tora Manush Ho
Dhire Bohe Meghna
Rupali Shoikotey
Ghuddi
Dahan
Chaka
Chitra Nodir Pare
Matir Moina
Runway
Politically Conscious Documentaries
Chapter Three
Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973): A Politically Conscious Attempt in Filmmaking in the Post-independence Bangladesh
Socio-political Context
Abar Tora Manush Ho: Storyline
Abar Tora Manush Ho: Political Criticism through the Transformation of Traditional Cinema Techniques
Historicity
Politicization
Critical Commitment
Cultural Specificity
Formal Issues
Distribution/Exhibition
Chapter Four
Rupali Shoikotey (1979): An Allegorical Protest against Political Suppression
Socio-political Context
Rupali Shoikotey: Storyline
Rupali Shoikotey: The Past as an Allegory for the Present
Historicity
Politicization
Critical Commitment
Cultural Specificity
Formal Issues
Distribution/Exhibition
Chapter Five
Conclusion
End Matter
Bibliography
End Pages
Back Cover

Citation preview

Political Cinema in Bangladesh A Dialogue with Third Cinema

Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem

Bangladesh Film Archive

Political Cinema in Bangladesh A Dialogue with Third Cinema

Author Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem Copyright & Publisher Bangladesh Film Archive Research Supervisor Dr. Naadir Junaid Editor Md. Nizamul Kabir Copy Editor Sumaiya Kabir Cover Sabuj Ahmed Printed by Shadow Printing & Packaging 290/2 Fakirapool, Motijheel, Dhaka-1000 First Published Boishakh 1428 / April 2021 Price: BDT 350 / USD 5

Political Cinema in Bangladesh: A Dialogue with Third Cinema by Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem. Copyright & Publisher: Bangladesh Film Archive, Ministry of Information, F-5, Agargaon Administrative Area, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207. Phone: +88-02-58151445 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Website: www.bfa.gov.bd

ISBN : 978-984-95330-0-9

Dedication for those politically apolitical minds…

Note from the Director General As a part of mass media, cinema plays very effective role in shaping audience perception. There is a common idea that every film is political. On the basis of that thought an ideology always works to produce the films. But from a theoretical perspective, the film makes its audience conscious about their real life condition of existence. It also calls viewers for taking stand against the prevailing ideology through its content and form, which serves a political purpose. This type of films can be defined as political film. Very few films, made in Bangladesh, worked as a language of protest. That could be understood in relation to Third Cinema, the most advanced version of political cinema. This book is published on the basis of a research titled ‘Political Cinema in Bangladesh: A Dialogue with Third Cinema’. In this research, the researcher explored two of the most provocative political films made after independence of Bangladesh. And that also investigated the purpose of the films in that socio-political context. The rigorous discussion between Bangladeshi political films and Third Cinema initiated in this book will help the readers to understand the importance of making political films in establishing an exploitation free society. It will also help the future filmmakers and researchers to understand the significance of employing methodological experiments to make influential films. Bangladesh Film Archive is proud to conduct the research and to publish this book. I sincerely thank the researcher, the supervisor and the colleagues of the Bangladesh Film Archive. Specially writer & researcher Abul Kalam Mohammad Shamsuddin, the Director, BFA; Md. Moniruzzaman, Assistant Director (Operation), BFA; Mohammad Anisur Rahman, Store Officer, BFA and Shabuj Miah, Assistant Librarian, BFA and everyone else who worked hard to complete the research and to publish the book. I wish an immense success of the book. Md. Nizamul Kabir Director General Bangladesh Film Archive April, 2021

Acknowledgement In the name of Almighty Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Kind, who made it possible for me to complete this research work. I am thankful to my supervisor, the honorable Professor Dr. Naadir Junaid, for his guidance and encouragement throughout the project, for his excellent suggestions he made upon appraising the drafts and lastly, for his invaluable feedback and support. My most

heartfelt thanks to the Bangladesh Film Archive authority for giving me the opportunity to conduct this research and publish my work as a book. Special thanks to Md. Nizamul Kabir, the Director General of Bangladesh Film Archive; writer & researcher Abul Kalam Mohammad Shamsuddin, the Director, BFA; Md. Moniruzzaman, Assistant Director (Operation), BFA; Mohammad Anisur Rahman, Store Officer, BFA and Shabuj Miah, Assistant Librarian, BFA for their immense support in the publication process. I am grateful to esteemed Professor Dr. A J M Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan, the one who inspired me and suggested that I conduct a detailed study on the area of political cinema, which later developed my interest in conducting the research. Earnest thanks to Sumaiya Kabir, the copy editor of the book for her sincere cooperation and support. Love and respect for those good souls who have always supported me from behind the scenes. A plain ‘Thanks’ would be a cruel compensation for my family members; their constant care and love inspire me in every single breath I take.

Preface “Something painful can be repressed but it always resurfaces in other ways” (Dorfman, 1997, as cited in Wayne, 2001, p. 112) For me, the purpose of cinema is not to provide mere entertainment but to provoke new thoughts in the conscience of the audience. Filmmakers can be seen as philosophers who work to enrich the audience’s realm of knowledge with the visual discussion they initiate in their films. To me, cinema is a very strong and influential medium of expression, and can be used as an excellent tool to be used against social injustices. At different times, filmmakers have performed active roles in the process of social change. Through their immediate response to different socio-political problems, filmmakers have worked to raise consciousness among the audience by showing them the real conditions of their existence. As a student of film studies, I have always wondered how cinema has worked as a tool for social change. While reading a film, my area of interest mostly revolves around understanding cinema as an ideological apparatus. However, this interest was dormant in me until the day I was hit by a spark of inspiration while looking for a research topic for my Master’s thesis. While discussing various possible topics for the thesis, my research supervisor suggested that I do a close study on political cinema. Since then, I have discovered how my area of interest correlates with the idea of political cinema. Although I had to make a short film instead of a thesis to complete the Master’s program, I wanted to study more about political cinema and especially, desired to understand political cinema in the context of Bangladesh. That is why I applied for the Bangladesh Film Archive Research Fellowship. The target was to analyze the politically informed films produced in Bangladesh from 1956 to 2020 in relation to the concepts of Third Cinema. However, the research project had to be finished within a short period of time, which led me to select only two films made in

the first decade of independence of Bangladesh for detailed investigation. In the very first chapter, I have provided insights on different aspects of political cinema from previous theoretical inputs and situated my study in relation to that conceptual understanding. The chapter will introduce the readers to the particular branch of film intelligentsia that deals with the understanding of political cinema concerning different related terms and will provide a clear conception of those interwoven terms. With this, the first chapter of the book provides the aim, scope and process of this study with an overview of the whole research. Chapter Two incorporates a short historiography of the politically conscious Bangladeshi films. Chapter Three and Chapter Four deal with the case studies of the selected films. Both the chapters initiate a detailed investigation of the films under selected theoretical framework to assess the political consciousness of the films and the techniques employed in the films to do so. Here, the close discussions linking the films and the Third Cinema provide an understanding of the distinctive aesthetic features incorporated in those films. Chapter Five gives a summary of the whole study clarifying how politically informed films in Bangladesh worked as a language of protest and how the films are informed by the Third Cinema aesthetics. If the study can inspire even a single reader to learn, understand, and work in the field of politically committed cinema, I will feel this venture to be a great success.

Content Chapter One Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review ....................................................................................... 2 Research Questions ................................................................................. 12 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 13 Framework for Film Analysis .................................................................. 17 Methodology ............................................................................................24 Chapter Two Historiography of Bangladeshi Politically Informed Cinema ..................... 27 Politically Conscious Fictional Cinema ................................................... 27 Politically Conscious Documentaries ...................................................... 33 Chapter Three

Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973): A Politically Conscious Attempt in Filmmaking in the Post-independence Bangladesh............................................ 35 Socio-political Context ............................................................................. 35

Abar Tora Manush Ho: Storyline ...........................................................43 Abar Tora Manush Ho: Political Criticism through the Transformation of Traditional Cinema Techniques ......................................................... 47 Chapter Four

Rūpali Shōikotey (1979): An Allegorical Protest against Political Suppression................................................................................................... 93 Socio-political Context ............................................................................. 94

Rupali Shoikotey: Storyline ................................................................... 101 Rupali Shoikotey: The Past as an Allegory for the Present.................. 104 Chapter Five Conclusion .................................................................................................. 159 Bibliography................................................................................................163

Chapter One

Introduction Bangladesh has had a long history of struggle and protest from preliberation times. This is reflected in different films that worked as means of political awareness and criticism, produced long before the country had attained independence to present times. This study aims to examine how the political cinema made in Bangladesh during the 1970s, worked as a language of protest and how these films have been informed by the aesthetics of Third Cinema. Third Cinema theory is used as the theoretical framework of this study. A qualitative research method is employed in order to conduct a detailed analysis the films. This chapter offers an introduction of the research: it provides a literature review, explores the basics of political cinema in relation to counter cinema, revolutionary cinema, Third Cinema, and militant cinema. It also gives an overview of the significance of this study by highlighting its research questions, theoretical framework, and methodology. The second chapter gives a historiography of politically conscious cinema in Bangladesh. Chapter three and chapter four present case studies of the two Bangladeshi politically committed films, Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973) directed by Khan Ataur Rahman and Rupali Shoikotey (1979) directed by Alamgir Kabir. The final chapter provides the conclusion of the study.

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Literature Review Political Cinema According to Wayne (2001), the question “what counts as political” itself is a political one (p. 1). Because of the elusive nature of the definition of ‘politics’, political cinema, for Maurizio Grande, is kind of a ‘mirage’ (as cited in O’Leary, 2016, p. 109). Terry Eagleton defines politics as “the way we organize our social life together, and power-relations which this involves” (as cited in O’Leary, 2016, p. 109). There is a popular notion that ‘all films are political’. Volonte (1975) does not believe in a category of political cinema because, to him, every film is political, in a general manner (p. 11). For him, an ‘apolitical cinema’ is the creation of poor journalism (Volonte, 1975, p. 11). According to Johnston (1976), political cinema needs to show things as they really are, it needs to produce the effect of realism. But realism in cinema is different than naturalism in other forms of art, because cinema, with the help of camera, mechanically reproduces reality (p. 55). A consumer society uses films as objects to divert, to turn their viewers away from reality (Grossvogel, 1975, p. 45). The true nature of the political film is to reveal the world as it really is, in an impassive way (Johnston, 1976, p. 55). Zimmer suggests countering the harmful effects of passivity through rupture (Grossvogel, 1975, p. 46). As Grossvogel (1975) writes, Zimmer proposes to counter the pernicious effects of passivity, assimilation (what Brecht called ‘digestion’), through rupture: there must be an opportunity for the spectator to break the ‘fascination’ exercised by the motionpicture in order for him to think the motion-picture, rather than to be absorbed by it. (p. 46)

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Political films aim at changing the content of the film, presenting the correct position to encourage the audience to think about him/herself (Johnston, 1976, p. 55). Pisters (2006) summarizes Walter Benjamin’s notion about cinema from the reading of his article The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, saying that, cinema is always political because, in fascism, it works to make masses ‘absent-minded’ and in communist tradition, it works as a weapon for the freedom of the people (Pisters, 2006, p. 175). Mazierska (2014) suggests to divide all political films into either conformist or oppositional and either marked or unmarked (p. 36). Conformist films accept the political status quo, but oppositional films reject the political status quo (Mazierska, p. 36). Again, marked films work to reveal the gods whom the viewers serve, where unmarked films hide the gods (Mazierska, p. 36). But she noticed that, although in theory, all films are accepted as political, in practice, only marked and oppositional films are regarded as political films (Mazierska, p. 36). For her, marked films oppose the capitalist status quo “on three levels of the film’s existence: production, text, and finally, distribution and exhibition” (Mazierska, p. 37). Again, history and culture play a significant role in understanding political cinema. Because a film that was highly political in the time of its production may not be regarded as political after a period of time, besides, the same film could be considered as political in one country but not in the other. Michael Chanan (2007) understands this as the dialectic between the film and the time and place of viewing (p. 39). According to Gilles Deleuze, there are two types of political cinema, classical political cinema and modern political cinema. For him, French directors Alain Resnais and Jean-Marie Straub are modern political filmmakers as “they know how to show how the people are, what is missing, what is not there” (Deleuze, 1989, pp. 215-216). Modern political cinema stands on the basis that “the people no longer exist; the people are missing” (Deleuze, p. 216). On

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the other hand, Soviet filmmaker like Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Alexander Dovzhenko are makers of classical political films where “the people already has a virtual existence in the process of being actualized” (Deleuze, p. 216). Deleuze identifies unanimity as a political character of American cinema where it occurs in the cases of “economic crisis, fight against moral prejudice, profiteers and demagogues which mark the awareness of the people” (Deleuze, p. 216). Again, classical political cinema is different to the modern political cinema when they display the relation between private and political affairs, where the classical always maintains a border between private and political but the modern merges political with private (Deleuze, pp. 217-218). Comolli & Narboni (1971) elaborate that every cinema is political because there always works an ideology that produces the cinema (p. 30). According to Althusser (1971), “Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (p. 162). For Christian Zimmer, “ideology is the area of the undifferentiated and manipulated mass that accepts an imposed thought and stifles thought” (as cited in Grossvogel, 1975, p. 45). Comolli & Narboni (1971) clarify the notion of political cinema in their influential essay Cinema/Ideology/Criticism. According to them, cinema has been turned into an instrument of ideology that reproduces the so-called reality using camera. This alleged reality is nothing but an expression of the dominant ideology. As every film is part of the economic system, it is also a part of the ideological system, since cinema and art are branches of ideology. For them, the cinema which can enable the audience to separate the connection between the cinema and its ideological function can become politically effective, and for this, the cinema needs to subvert the dominant ideology with both its form and content (Comolli & Narboni, pp. 29-32). It seems that political cinema needs to give great importance to its language (form/style). Zimmer proposes to attack the language of

Introduction

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cinema, as Grossvogel (1975) states, The political motion picture must thus decide whether it should use the official language to voice a different truth, or whether that very language must be seen as the ideological core with priority given to its destruction. These two attitudes suggest this formulation of the ideological struggle: film something else in the same way, or film the same thing in a different way. Zimmer favors the second. He proposes to attack language itself. (p. 48) Comolli & Narboni (1971) divide films into seven categories, among which categories b, c, and g go with the idea of political film (pp. 31-34). A political film must be radical both in its form or style and content. Category b films employ direct political action or explicit political subject and challenge the traditional depiction of reality (Comolli & Narboni, p. 32). Category c films may not employ explicit political content but use a radical form or style of depiction (Comolli & Narboni, p. 32). Category g films may not be overtly radical with style and form but attack the basic problem of depiction to produce meaning (Comolli & Narboni, p. 34). All three categories work on two levels, both signified and signifier. Here signified refers to the films that attack the prevailing ideology with either direct or indirect political action (political content) and signifier refers to the techniques by which films work to break away from the traditional ways of depicting reality (form/style). For Thompson & Bordwell (2002), the rawness of style in film itself is a political statement (p. 538). As conventional film attempts to draw the audience into its illusion with a vision to rule them, Christian Zimmer argues that political cinema must achieve a dialogue to enable the spectator to question his world (as cited in Grossvogel, 1975, p. 46-47). In doing so, political cinema becomes self-reflexive to make the viewer conscious about the formal devices used by the film to convey that films themselves are products with a specific ideology and are never neutral (Mazierska, 2014, p. 41).

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Denoting Mike Wayne, Mazierska (2014) states that political cinema deals with the issues of inequality resulting from people occupying different economic and social positions (p. 41). Again, filmmakers show the causes and consequences behind the struggle of people and associate their roles by using voiceover narration (Mazierska, p. 41). A political cinema is not bound to be either fiction or non-fiction. It could be both or sometimes, “the boundary between documentary and fiction cinema tends to be blurred” (Mazierska, 2014, p. 41). A politically conscious cinema or a political cinema thus stands against the dominant ideology and questions the status quo with its content and form. Political cinema can be understood in relation to different terms like counter-cinema, revolutionary cinema, Third Cinema and militant cinema. Counter Cinema According to Hayward (1996), the cinema which questions and subverts existing cinematic codes and conventions through its own cinematic practices can be described as counter cinema (p. 93). It can be formalist and materialist in its aesthetics and political concerns with the how and why of filmmaking (Hayward, p. 93). It is an oppositional cinema that works to expose hegemonic practices and makes visible what is invisibilized (Hayward, p. 94). In his article Godard and Counter-Cinema: Vent d’Est, Peter Wollen noted the codes of counter cinema which are “inversion and denial, pitting narrative heterogeneity against narrative homogeneity, estrangement against identification, reflexivity against seamlessness, open-endedness against closure, unpleasure against pleasure, and the mechanics of representation against the maintenance of the fiction” (as cited in Silverman, 1985, p. 4). According to Willemen (1991), counter cinema adopts the principle of doing the opposite of dominant cinema aesthetics (p. 7).

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Revolutionary Cinema According to Sanjines (1970), the cinema which creates a consciousness for liberation is called revolutionary cinema (p. 13). For him, the exposure of truth is the most revolutionary cultural action, and revolutionary cinema proposes to create consciousness for liberation, exposing the truth. This kind of cinema is at war with imperialism. The objective of revolutionary cinema is to communicate with people by rejecting the techniques of commercial cinema. Sanjines (1970) emphasizes that revolutionary cinema must call for action instead of being just critical; it is a cinema that does not tell stories but makes history (p. 14). Solanas and Getino (1970) understand revolutionary cinema as that which attempts to intervene in a situation and provides discovery through transformation, as they put, Revolutionary cinema is not fundamentally one which illustrates, documents or passively establishes in a situation: rather, it attempts to intervene in the situation as an element providing thrust or rectification. To put it another way, it provides discovery through transformation. (p. 6) For Getino (2011), revolutionary cinema is defined by “the very practice of the film with its intended concrete audience: that which the film seizes as something recuperable in a particular historical circumstance for the liberation process” (p. 42). For Roncallo & AriasHerrera (2013), it is essential to understand the enemy of revolution to understand the revolutionary role of cinema (pp. 97-98). Citing Glauber Rocha, they explain that, the neocolonial approach of imposing European and American terms in the understanding of reality which created a distorted representation of reality in Latin America, made people unable to understand their actual condition (Roncallo & Arias-Herrera, pp. 97-98). Revolutionary cinema works as a means to access the true reality with the content, form, and new logic of production (Roncallo & Arias-Herrera, p. 99). Senegalese director

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Ousmane Sembene denies a direct relationship between cinema and revolution, saying that a film can be revolutionary without creating an actual revolution (as cited in Gabriel, 1982, p. 22). For him, the mission of a revolutionary cinema is not to rouse the revolution but to prepare for the revolution (as cited in Gabriel, 1982, p. 38). Revolutionary cinema should intervene in a crisis situation. Gabriel (1982) states that a film’s revolutionary nature depends on three things, culture, history and ideology (p. 38). He regards a revolutionary outlook in a crisis situation to be the crucial ingredient of revolutionary films, which stimulates inspiration and makes people aware of hostile forces. This works to orient the society towards a more revolutionary outlook by showing the changes in the mode of production and existing production relations (Gabriel, p. 37).

Third Cinema The term ‘Third Cinema’ was coined by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in their manifesto Toward a Third Cinema, which was first published in the cinema journal ‘Tricontinental’ in 1969. It was written as notes and reflections on their subversive documentary film La Hora de Los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces), released in 1968. For Gabriel (1982), Third Cinema, at first, was used to refer to a special kind of Latin American film, which was later understood as films with a social and political purpose (p. 121). For Solanas & Getino (1970), Third Cinema is the cinema of liberation, which is the second alternative of First Cinema (pp. 4-5). As they classified cinema in three types, they defined First Cinema as Hollywood based overtly commercial cinema and Second Cinema as European art cinema or auteur cinema (Getino, 2011, p. 52). First Cinema works for commercial satisfaction for the producers and leads to adopt the bourgeois ideology (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 4).

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Here, the audience are nothing but passive consumers of the prevailing ideology of the ruling class, unable to create a new one. In Second Cinema, the filmmaker demands to be free to express himself, and this was seen as an attempt towards cultural decolonization. But Second Cinema failed to achieve this which Solanas and Getino suggest by citing Godard, “the Second Cinema filmmaker remained trapped inside the fortress” (p. 4). The real alternative to First Cinema, which Solanas and Getino (1970) propose, is Third Cinema, a cinema of liberation because it can fulfil one of the two basic requirements: “making films which the system cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs or making films that directly and explicitly set out to fight the system” (pp. 4-5). Thus, Third Cinema is the cinema which explicitly stands against the system. Wayne (2001) considers Third Cinema as “the most advanced and sophisticated body of political films”, which seeks social and cultural emancipation (p. 1). Solanas and Getino (1970) emphasize on the historical specificity of Third Cinema, as they state, … each projection of a film act pre-supposes a different setting, since the space where it takes place, the materials that go to make it up (actors- participants), and the historic time in which it takes place are never the same. This means that the result of each projection act will depend on those who organize it, on those who participate in it, and on the time and place; the possibility of introducing variations, additions, and changes is unlimited. The screening of a film act will always express in one way or another the historical situation in which it takes place; its perspectives are not exhausted in the struggle for power but will instead continue after the taking of power to strengthen the revolution. (p. 10) Militant Cinema Militant cinema is one of the categories of Third Cinema, which Getino (2011) defines as its “most advanced category” (p. 52).

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Militant cinema is used by revolutionary organizations where it works as an instrument of or a support for a specific political goal (Getino, p. 41). As revolutionary cinema, militant cinema is also defined by the very practice of the film with its intended concrete audience (Getino, p. 42). It is a collective political practice where everyone involved in the cinema discusses, elaborates, investigates, and realizes the political fact through the cinematic process (Getino, p. 43). Militant cinema can be of different types, such as: essay cinema, which work more in-depth than in breadth; informational cinema, work in specific circumstances to reach the message rapidly in a short period of time; pamphlet cinema, that is made with one specific event in

focus; documentary cinema, which make up the most of all militant cinema; and inconclusive cinema, that transmits experience and knowledge (Getino, pp. 45-48). Whether a film is militant or not, is based on the context of its use. If a film does not serve the political purposes of the local revolutionary organizations in Argentina, it is not a militant cinema, but it could be so in Cuba, if it serves the purposes in Cuba (as cited in Buchsbaum, 2001, p. 160). For Hennebelle and Serceau, “films that generally present the double characteristic of having been shot on a very small budget, in the margins of the commercial production system, and of having the goal of short-term political intervention or long-term ideological intervention” are militant cinema (as cited in Grant, 2016, p. 7). Grant (2016) identifies three characteristics of militant cinema, which are: a cinema that is different to commercial production and distribution, which does not have sophisticated technological support and which is a combative cinema that struggles against imperialism and capitalism (p. 9). From the detailed investigation of the different viewpoints on political cinema, counter cinema, revolutionary cinema, militant cinema and Third Cinema, it can be concluded that a politically

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conscious or politically critical cinema stands against and subverts the dominant ideology. In doing so, it employs a way of representation that is different from traditional representation. It is combative in manner as it attacks the established system by utilizing innovative formal styles. It is not only different in its production but also in its distribution. In his Ph.D. thesis, Bengali Political Cinema: Protest and Social Transformation, Junaid (2013) examined how socially conscious Bengali filmmakers came to grips with urgent social and political issues in films made between 1970 and 2002. He studied both the films of Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India. In case of Bangladesh, he examined two Bangladeshi politically critical films, Jibon Theke Neya by Zahir Raihan, produced in 1970 and Matir Moina by Tareque Masud, produced in 2002. The films deal with different political issues of different contexts. In the history of Bangladeshi cinema, Jibon Theke Neya is one of the most provocative films, produced to intervene in the crisis situation that led up to the Liberation War of Bangladesh. It is an allegorical cinema made to protest the oppression of East Pakistan under West Pakistan. Again, Matir Moina , produced in 2002, is a political film which criticizes religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has gone through different political and social changes. The post-independence decade itself was riddled with different political situations. After the country’s liberation in 1971 to August, 1975, the country was ruled by a democratic government. However, a miliary coup was staged in 1975 and the country fell under a military regime. Different films were made in this period that marked the political issues and worked to intervene in the crisis situation. This research conducts case studies to examine two films Abar

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Tora Manush Ho (1973) and Rupali Shoikotey (1979). Khan Ataur Rahman’s film Abar Tora Manush Ho deals with the social and political issues of the post-liberation era of Bangladesh. After gaining independence in 1971, the newly liberated country had gone through a plethora of situations that raised many questions in the minds of its populace. This cinema, with its transformation of traditional film language, addresses those issues. Although it does not employ unconventional film language, it raises a strong voice against the status quo. Similarly, Rupali Shoikotey, directed by Alamgir Kabir, was made in a time when the country was ruled by a military regime and thus the people still experienced the colonial struggle in a liberated country. Though the cinema addressed the pre-independence period from 1966 to 1970, it subtly indicated and objected to the neocolonial social and political systems active during the postindependence period. It also experimented with film language. A few writings in Bangla have addressed both films but no work has been done on them in English. Again, no in-depth theoretical work has been done on the films to understand how these films served as a language of protest in those critical, historically important situations and how these films are informed with the Third Cinema aesthetics. This study focuses on filling this gap.

Research Questions With the detailed investigation of the films mentioned above, the study seeks the answers to the following questions— 1. How does the political cinema of Bangladesh work as a language of protest? 2. How have these films been informed by the aesthetics of Third Cinema?

Introduction

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Theoretical Framework This study employs the Third Cinema theory for a detailed understanding of the selected political films made in Bangladesh.

Third Cinema Theory Third Cinema, as mentioned before, is a cinema of liberation first theorized by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. In their manifesto, they articulated the concept of Third Cinema and Third Cinema aesthetics. It is a type of cinema which fights a neocolonial situation for liberation; it fights against colonization, it fights for the decolonization of culture, as the culture of a neo-colonialized country is nothing but “the expression of an overall dependence that generates models and values born from the needs of imperialist expansion” (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 2). Third Cinema stands against the satisfying bourgeois ideology (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 4). Moreover, it works to show the factual reality, coming out of the veil of imperialism and capitalism. The veil creates an image of reality to make people unconscious about their actual condition. On this note, Solanas and Getino state that, “the image of reality is more important than reality itself” (p. 6). Espinosa (1997), in his discussion of revolutionary cinema, comes up with his notion of imperfect cinema which stands for cinema committed to liberation (p. 77). For him, imperfect cinema should show the process which generates the problems (Espinosa, p. 78). Wayne (2001) identified four key markers of Third Cinema which are historicity, politicization, critical commitment and cultural specificity (p. 14). Third Cinema uses history as a process to seek emancipation, builds up a political consciousness among the audience, holds a critical commitment to the oppressed and explores

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the ways culture has been a site of political struggle (Wayne, pp. 1424). Again, Gabriel (1982) identified five key themes of Third Cinema which include class issues, culture, religion, sexism and armed struggle (pp. 15-20). Third Cinema tends to work with simplified cinema technology so that filmmaking is within reach of larger social layers (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 5). Being inspired by French philosopher Rene Descartes’s proposition, “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think; therefore I am), Solanas and Getino (1970) propose, “I make the revolution; therefore, I exist” (p. 6). They state that, Third Cinema, as revolutionary cinema, works with both destruction and construction where it is the destruction of the images created by neocolonialism and construction of living reality which is able to recapture truth (Solanas & Getino, p. 6). Third Cinema filmmaking is against the notion of the specific job descriptions of the production crew in traditional filmmaking. Here, filmmakers work as a disciplined guerrilla group, and as for Solanas and Getino (1970) the camera works as a rifle and filmmakers as a film-guerilla group (p. 7). Makers of revolutionary cinema becomes familiar with all the levels of filmmaking as the “filmmaker acts with a radically new vision of the role of the producer, team-work, tools, details, etc.” and each member of the group needs to know the use of every equipment (Solanas & Getino, p. 8). For Sanjines (1997), revolutionary cinema is a collective process as the revolution itself is collective (p. 63). Third Cinema is different from traditional filmmaking not only in production but also in distribution and exhibition. As the cinema works against the dominant ideology, the distribution and exhibition had to face different difficulties by the system. For this reason, there needs to find new ways of distribution against traditional theatre distribution like screening in apartments and houses, universities,

Introduction

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parishes or cultural centers as happened in Argentina and Chile (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 8). Again, in a screening of Third Cinema, a spectator transforms into an actor being politicized by the cinema. Solanas and Getino (1970) state this type of screening as a meeting which is an anti-imperialist unity and they note three essential factors in this process; participants who respond to the summons of the cinema, a free space for discussion and the film itself (pp. 9-10). Sanjines (1997) notes the participation of people in the discussion as a way of getting new ideas about film language (p. 64). According to Wayne (2001), “the role of the audience and the nature of their engagement with the text” is central to Third Cinema (p. 11). Both documentary and fiction cinema could be Third Cinema as Solanas and Getino (1970) describe documentary as the primary basis of revolutionary filmmaking (p. 6) and for Espinosa (1997), imperfect cinema can be either fiction or non-fiction or both (p. 81). Again, Solanas and Getino (1970) do not bind the making of Third Cinema in any genre as they state “pamphlet films, didactic films, report films, essay films, witness-bearing films–any militant form of expression is valid” (p. 6). According to Willeman (1989), Fernando Solanas talked about 36 different kinds of Third Cinema (p. 9). Espinosa (1997) is bothered with neither quality nor technique as it could be created with Mitchell or an 8mm camera, either in a studio or in a guerrilla camp (p. 82). He is interested only in the ways by which the cinema is being able to overcome the barrier of the formal conditions of traditional cinema (Espinosa, p. 82). Solanas and Getino (1970) emphasize on the discovery of the filmmaker’s own language in case of making Third Cinema which should arise from the militant or transforming worldview of any kind (p. 6). For them, a revolutionary cinema can not exist without employing constant and methodological exercise of practice, search and experimentation (Solanas & Getino, p. 7). A film cannot be

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decolonized if it cannot decolonize its language (Solanas, et al., 1969, p. 21). For Sanjines (1997), with the change in the production process, there comes a change in content and form (p. 63). According to Gabriel (1982), an infinite variety of styles and subjects can be included by Third Cinema (p. 3). He asserts that cinema is equated with a weapon by the Third Cinema filmmakers—they understand the act of filmmaking as something more than a political act (Gabriel, p. xi). Thus the aim of Third Cinema to politicize cinema establishes a new cinematic code (Gabriel, p. xi). Third Cinema utilizes different stylistic approaches to raise consciousness among its audience by addressing political and ideological issues. Giving the example of La Hora de Los Hornos, and some other films, Gabriel (1982) explains different styles used by Third Cinema, like emphasizing collective characters than the central one, dividing the cinema into different parts for better understanding, use of the written statement, quotation or slogan to highlight the key moments, use of actual sound by denying laid-in music and sound, use of handheld camera, experiment with camera movement and lighting, etc. (pp. 24-33). Wayne (2001) states that, although being politically oppositional to the dominant cinema and Second Cinema, Third Cinema concentrates on transforming the cinematic language of those cinemas, rather than rejecting (p. 10). The relation of Third Cinema with first and Second Cinema thus is dialectic. Solanas and Getino assert that the revolutionary act in the film is not defined by the form, utilized in the cinema but the transformative role the cinema takes in a strategy of liberation to reach in a specific circumstance (as cited in Buchsbaum, 2001, p. 160). Therefore, the theorists of Third Cinema put emphasize on the innovative formal style for Third Cinema, but they refuse to set any particular aesthetic strategy on the way of achieving the activation of a revolutionary consciousness (Willemen, 1991, pp. 6-7).

Introduction

17

Thus, Third Cinema is the most sophisticated and advanced body of political cinema with its revolutionary contents, formal experiments which can be said, its utilization of unconventional approaches in the production, distribution and exhibition of films.

Framework for Film Analysis According to the theoretical insights stated above from the significant works on Third Cinema, the following framework has been used to examine the selected Bangladeshi films. The framework has been used to analyze the films in both production and distribution stages. The issues of content and form are stated under the production stage. The structured analysis of the films intends to understand how the cinemas worked as a language of protest and how these films are informed by the aesthetics of Third Cinema.

Production As Third Cinema emphasizes on both the content and the form of cinema, the topics related to content and form seem to be best fitted under ‘production’. Here Third Cinema content is best marked by four key issues.

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a. Thematic Issues Gabriel (1982) identified five recurring themes in Third Cinema– class issues, culture, religion, sexism and armed struggle (p. 15). Again, Wayne (2001) identified four key characteristics of Third Cinema (p. 14). From their understanding of Third Cinema, four issues are vital for a detailed investigation of the film content which are historicity, politicization, critical commitment and cultural specificity. i. Historicity Third Cinema uses history as a process to seek emancipation. History can provide answers to the questions: who we are, why we are and where we are, and that is the reason Third Cinema grasps “history as process, change, contradiction and conflict” (Wayne, 2001, p. 14). ii. Politicization Third Cinema needs to raise political consciousness among its spectators. For this, it must deal with the process by which an exploited or oppressed being becomes conscious of his/her real condition of life which makes him/her determined to do something about it (Wayne, 2001, p. 16). To do this, the cinema may ask questions, help to learn new things, show interactions among political activists, again, the spectators can also be politicized by setting them at the point of view of the exploited ones (Wayne, pp. 16-17). iii. Critical Commitment Third Cinema must have a critical commitment in itself. This means that Third Cinema is neither a mere bearer of propaganda, highlighting only the one side of the coin nor “a disinterested objective observer” (Wayne, 2001, p. 18). It must have a specific ideology which is reasonably justified. In doing so, Third Cinema can be a means of exploring gender and class issues. Referring to Frantz Fanon, Wayne (2001) emphasizes the importance of “developing a relationship between the revolutionary party and the people, so that the latter becomes a fully involved participant in the transformation of society”

Introduction

19

(pp. 20-21). So, Third Cinema must address the issues which will work to ensure the elimination of the exploitation in the long run. Wayne (2001) highly addressed this concern of Fanon, as exploitation is something that does not depend on the colonial rulers, but also on the formation of the society and without educating and politicizing the people it is not possible to eliminate it entirely (pp. 20-21). Again, to get rid of exploitation, Third Cinema must also deal with the issues of class difference and gender. Third Cinema needs to register “the significance of class difference within the liberation struggle” (Wayne, p. 21). Gabriel (1982) emphasized on the people’s identification of the class enemies (p. 15). For him, class enemies may be either the foreign ruling class from which people seek emancipation through struggle or the native ones who always tie up with the forces of oppression for their bourgeois interest (Gabriel, p. 15). He also viewed the issues of racism in this context of class antagonism (Gabriel, p. 16). Wayne (2001) emphasized the importance of Third Cinema in addressing “the role of women in revolutionary struggle” (p. 21) whereas Gabriel (1982) identified “the struggle for the emancipation of women” as a recurring theme of Third Cinema (p. 18). He also identified ‘armed struggle’ against class enemies and imperialism as another recurring theme of Third Cinema (Gabriel, p. 19). iv. Cultural Specificity Third Cinema provides a greater emphasis on culture as cinema itself is a part of culture, and oppressive forces always exert special efforts to control culture. As Wayne (2001) explains, Third Cinema is characterized by its intimacy and familiarity with culture-both in the specific sense of cultural production (for example, song, dance, theatre, rituals, cinema, literature) and in the broader sense of the word (the nuances of everyday living). Further, Third Cinema explores how culture is a site of political struggle. History has shown that one of the first things which colonialism and imperialism

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attempt to control, in parallel with economic resources, is culture, where values and beliefs and identities are forged and re-forged. (p. 22) Imperialist culture always attempts to destroy national culture and that made filmmakers to take attempts to preserve national culture through Third Cinema, which Gabriel (1982) analyzes as the aesthetics of liberation (p. 16). b. Formal Issues Third Cinema, which stands against the system, gives great emphasis on the formal aspects of cinema as well as it does on the content. It deals with film language and film making techniques in a significantly different way. As Third Cinema is a cinema of liberation which stands against colonization, Solanas, et al. (1969) stated that a film could not be decolonized if it cannot decolonize its language (p. 21). Solanas and Getino (1970) emphasized on the discovery of a filmmaker’s own language in the case of making Third Cinema (p. 6).

Film Language Third Cinema does not restrict films to be fiction or non-fiction. It could be a documentary, a fiction or mixed of both types (Espinosa, 1997, p. 81). Again, it is not bound to be of any specific genre (Solanas & Getino, 1970, p. 6). Third Cinema language must be an alternative to traditional cinema, and it gives plenty of independence to the filmmaker to do so as Espinosa (1997) is ready to accept anything which makes the cinema able to overcome the barrier of the formal conditions of traditional cinema (p. 82). For Solanas and Getino (1970), a revolutionary cinema can not exist without employing constant and methodological exercise of practice, search and experimentation (p. 7). Third Cinema does not have any specific aesthetic strategy to follow. But it can include an infinite variety of styles for establishing a new cinematic code (Gabriel, 1982, p. xi).

Introduction

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Distribution/Exhibition In case of Third Cinema, distribution and exhibition differ from traditional ways as well. Keeping in mind the goal of Third Cinema to transform a spectator into an actor being politicized by the cinema, new ways of distribution and exhibition are initiated as Solanas and Getino (1970) define this type of screening as a political meeting (p. 9).

Along with the framework stated above, the films are also analyzed through the theoretical lens developed from the concepts of political cinema emerging from the works of Jean-Luc Godard, Bertolt Brecht, and Collin MacCabe. According to Jean-Luc Godard (2014), political films are different to the films that are made politically (p. 169). For him, making political films and making films politically are opposing concepts because political films provide the description of situations while politically made films provide the concrete analysis of a concrete situation (Godard, p. 169). As from Colin MacCabe (1980), During the projection of an imperialist film the screen sells the voice of the boss to the people…During the screening of a militant film the screen in no more than a blackboard offering a concrete analysis of a concrete situation. (p. 53) Politically made films stand against the objective representation of the world, initiating criticism and self criticism (Godard, 2014, p. 169). As MacCabe (1980) says, a film about politics “must be a participant in the reality that it attempts to articulate rather than presenting itself as an observer that can show us the truth of any situation” (p. 54). It is an activity, it is about being militant and using images and sounds as teeth and lips to bite with (Godard, 2014, p.

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170). Godard was conscious about the function of a film, about which MacCabe (1980) says, “the relation with the audience determines the functioning on the screen” (p. 53). For him, a film about politics must enjoy a different relation with its audience from that of the commercial cinema in which politics can be represented by addressing specific audiences in specific situations (MacCabe, p. 54). Godard was highly conscious about language in the making of political cinema. As MacCabe states, along with his search for a form of politics in his early works, Godard also searched for a form of cinema which could discuss politics (p. 51). For Godard, the aesthetic and the political are intimately linked (MacCabe, p. 50). He examined the function of art and intellectuals and their relationship to empirical reality within the realm of moving depiction in three arenas: political, aesthetical and semiotic (Emmelhainz, 2019, p. 31). In his search for a form of cinema, Godard employed different strategies like “repeating, testing and incorporating different historical and contemporary avant-garde strategies (Maoism, militant and materialist filmmaking, Brechtian theater, etc.)” (Emmelhainz, p. 35). German playwright Bertolt Brecht understood political art as different to general art because to be political, art has to be made so (Polan, 1974, para. 33). In contrast to Aristotelian dramatic theatre, Brecht developed a new type of theatre which he called epic theatre (Epstein, 2015, p. 3). He created an alienation effect in his epic theatre, where alienating an event or character, according to him, “means first of all stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them” (Dickson, 1978, p. 241). A performance needs to alienate its audience from conventional forms of identification and clichéd modes of perception and understanding to succeed in its political function (Brooker, 2006, pp. 213-214). To build political consciousness among the audience,

Introduction

23

Brecht emphasized on making the audience understand the historical aspect of a specific social situation, which he states, is only possible by the use of the theatrical device Verfremdungseffekt (Brooker, p. 215). Verfremdungseffekt was the primary theatrical device of epic theater, which was intended to ‘estrange’ or ‘distance’ the spectator to prevent identification and empathy with the characters and situation and allow the adoption of a critical attitude toward the actions in the play (Kellner, 2020, p. 32). Brechet achieved alienation through “the direct and indirect use of a narrator, the conspicuous use of songs, masks, placards and images set in a montaged narrative sequence” (Brooker, 2006, p. 215). He used the “direct addresses of the audience” to break the fourth wall in his theatre by having the stage actors acknowledge the presence of the audience (Davis, 2015, pp. 86-87). Brecht understood the “need to innovate, experiment and produce new aesthetic forms” (Kellner, 2020, p. 33). His art “aimed at a radical pedagogy that would provide political education, cultivate political instincts, and provoke revolutionary political practice” (Kellner, p. 34). Apart from epic theatre, Brecht created a new type of theater, the ‘learning play’, which he described as “a collective political meeting” where the audience was bound to participate actively (Kellner, 2020, p. 34). These ‘learning plays’ exemplified the principles of Brecht’s “political aesthetics, which would create a new type of participatory culture that would promote revolution” (Kellner, p. 34). Brecht’s drama prefigures the ambition of Third Cinema as achieving “a new synthesis between the spectator’s emotional and intellectual capacities” (Wayne, 2001, p. 42). Encouraging a more active spectator, attention paid to reworking the meaning or politics of techniques, giving them a functional transformation, democratizing production, all these Third Cinema concerns are prefigured in Brecht’s works (Wayne, p. 43).

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Methodology This study employs a qualitative research method. Two films have been selected purposively for detailed investigation on the basis of the degree of political consciousness the films exhibit. The selected films were produced in two different significant political contexts in the decade of the 1970s. The research employs case study as the method of inquiry to assess the political consciousness of the films. As Yin (2018) suggests, the more a research question requires an extensive and in-depth description of some social phenomenon by questioning ‘how’ and ‘why’ some social phenomenon works, the more the case study research becomes relevant (p. 33). Here, the selected films are the cases which have been examined to understand how the films worked as a language of protest in those socio-political contexts and how the films have been informed by the aesthetics of third cinema. Textual analysis is done for the detailed investigation of the films. Frey et al. (1999) define textual analysis as a method “to describe and interpret the characteristics of a recorded or visual message” (p. 225). The purpose of textual analysis is to describe the content, structure, and functions of the messages contained in texts (Frey et al., p. 225). The content of the films, which mean the images, sounds, dialogues, music, setting, camera angles, editing styles etcetera all these aspects are taken as the primary text to understand the use of content and form in the films. Related books, journal articles, newspaper reports, interviews of the film directors have been taken as secondary texts to understand the historical context during the production of the films. The content of the films have been analyzed in relation to the then political context of the country to understand how the films worked as a language of protest in that historical context. Again, the form or styles employed in the films have been analyzed to understand how the film language has been used to

Introduction

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convey political meaning. To understand Bangladeshi political films in relation to the Third Cinema, the selected films have been analyzed under the framework of the Third Cinema theory. Along with this, the films have been examined with the conceptual understanding of political cinema through the concepts of Jean-Luc Godard, Bertolt Brecht, and Collin MacCabe. Semiotic analysis of the primary texts has been initiated in the investigation of the films for a better understanding. The term ‘semiology’ was first proposed by the founder of modern linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He defined semiology as “a science that studies the life of signs within society” (Saussure, 1959, p. 16). Saussure’s theories of semiotics were primarily involved in film by French film theorist Christian Metz who proposed syntagmatic analysis as a system for categorizing scenes in films (Rushton, 2009, p. 266). “For semioticians, a sign must consist of two parts: the signifier and the signified. The word ‘word’, for example—the collection of letters or sounds—is a signifier; what it represents is something else again—the ‘signified’’’ (Monaco, 2000, pp. 157-158). According to Metz (1991), the scale of shots, sequences, camera movements, relation between the image and speech, montage and other large syntagmatic units are the basic figures of the semiotics of the cinema (p. 94). The ideas of signs and syntax regarding semiotic analysis of films (Monaco, 2000, pp. 152-227), have been employed for a detailed investigation of the film texts.

Chapter Two

Historiography of Bangladeshi Politically Informed Cinema In East Bengal, which was later known as East Pakistan and now Bangladesh, the very first film was produced in the year 1928. The cinema was a silent short film titled Sukumari (The Good Girl) directed by Ambuj Prasanna Gupta. As it was not released in theatre, Shesh Chumbon (The Last Kiss) was the very first film released in this region under the British rule in 1931. It was a full-length silent film directed by Ambuj Prasanna Gupta. The first full-length film with sound, Mukh O Mukhosh (The Face and The Mask), directed by Abdul Jabbar Khan was released in 1956 under the Pakistan regime. The film opened up and presented the possibilities of having a film industry in East Pakistan. Understanding a political film is not possible without situating it in its historical context of production. Therefore, a political film needs to be understood in relation to the existing state or government. From the beginning to the present, the film industry of Bangladesh has experienced three periods of time, the British period, preindependence East Pakistan period and post-independence Bangladesh period. Films made in all three phases count as Bangladeshi cinema. From 1931 to 2020, the industry has produced around 2500 full-length feature films, but very few of those seem politically concerned. The films that can be defined as political in their form or content or both have been described below.

Politically Conscious Fictional Cinema Kokhono Asheni Kokhono Asheni (It Never Came, 1961), is the debut film of Zahir Raihan. The cinema simply represents the story of a lower middle

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class family, their life struggle along with the struggle of another woman, her story and the views of the society in the 1960s in a very well-organized narrative style. Though the formal style employed in the film is not different from traditional film language, the content of the film was vastly different. The film can be understood as an allegory of the political and social struggle of East Pakistan. Hayder (2013) has tried to understand the cinema as a political one. He argues that the cinema symbolized the situation of the people of East Pakistan under the Pakistani regime in the 1960s, when people were being oppressed by the rulers. He finds Mariam to be the representative of East Pakistan and Sultan as the representative of West Pakistan. People of East Pakistan had struggled a long time for their rights and freedom, but it could not be achieved just as Mariam tries to be free but fails. However, the director keeps the hope alive with a shot of Mariam where she is standing in the balcony waiting for the arrival of freedom.

Jibon Theke Neya Jibon Theke Neya (Glimpses of Life, 1970) is another film directed by Zahir Raihan and can be understood as the greatest politically committed film ever made in Bangladesh. By using the tools of popular cinema, the film presented content that delivers a very strong message to raise awareness among the audience. The film was made just before the independence of Bangladesh back when it was still known as East Pakistan and was under the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan. Living in a colonial context, Zahir Raihan represented the military oppression through the metaphor of a family’s story, and thus raised his voice against the exploitation. In the film, there is a dominating woman in the family who is feared by the other family members. Her husband, who is a lawyer, tries to express his wish to escape from her tyranny through his song, but she never lets him finish singing the whole song. Her two brothers, Anis and Faruk, are

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also controlled by her. The elder brother, Anis is an advocate and the entire family depends on his earnings, but he does not have the right to talk over her sister. The younger one, Faruk, is a student who is involved in political movement and seems to be the only person who can debate with the sister, but even that is limited to a feeble degree. Things seem to start to change when the two brothers get married. But the sister turns cruel to secure her tyranny over the family. Thus, the film is all about the story of the struggle for freedom in a family context which symbolizes the struggle of the people of East Pakistan under the military rule. The zeal for freedom of expression, freedom of choice, and overall, the freedom in every aspect of life, are represented here in a rigorous allegoric way. It provides a political statement to intervene in the crisis situation of 1970 in East Pakistan.

Abar Tora Manush Ho Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973), a cinema directed by Khan Ataur Rahman, was produced in the post-independence context of Bangladesh. With a traditional formal implication, the film criticized the existing status quo. It stood against the social and political injustice occurring in a newly liberated country. The difference between previous political films and Abar Tora Manush Ho is that here the director did not take the help of metaphors to raise his voice. He did this by showing how a state, which is in the second year of its liberation, has been overrun by the shadow of corruption, how the actual fighters of the Liberation War are mistreated and how fake and fraudulent people have taken advantage of that. The story develops around the activities of seven students who had participated in the Liberation War of Bangladesh, and after the war, remain conscious about the happenings of the society. They find grossly unequal flow of wealth among the people living in the same society and try to stand against social injustice. But they become

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Political cinema in Bangladesh

victims of the context as the administration sees them to be the guilty ones. Their teacher, who had taught them to be honest in any situation, always supports them and at the end of the film, he pretends to be the killer of his own corrupted son to save one of the students. The cinema upholds the dignity of honesty and criticizes the corruption in the society. Thus, it serves a strong political purpose in the context of a corrupted society of the newly liberated nation.

Dhire Bohe Meghna Dhire Bohe Meghna (Quiet Flows the River Meghna, 1973), directed by Alamgir Kabir, was also produced in the post-independence context. Though it did not deliver any direct political statement, it portrayed the cruelty of war and the despair and tension of the postwar period. As it highlights the disappointment of the freedom fighters after the war in the national context, it also introduces the international political concern discussing the future of Bangladesh as a neighbouring country of India. As India had supported Bangladesh in the Liberation War, the film subtly indicates the position of Bangladesh in relation to India in the future arena of world politics. It employed a nonlinear storytelling style and used real footage of Liberation War to establish the situation. Rupali Shoikotey Rupali Shoikotey (The Loner, 1979) is another film by veteran filmmaker Alamgir Kabir. It was produced in a context when Bangladesh was experiencing post-liberation military rule. Alamgir Kabir came up with a direct political statement in this film, but to criticize the prevailing status-quo, he borrowed the context of preindependence military rule in East Pakistan. He was also concerned with formal experiments in the film as he used negative footage, real footage of different incidents, symbolic representation, etc. He showed courage in the crisis situation of post-independence Bangladesh, which

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Zahir Raihan did in 1970 by making Jibon Theke Neya under the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan.

Ghuddi Ghuddi (1980) was also produced in the context of military rule in post-independence Bangladesh. The director, Syed Salahuddin Zaki, played a significant role in criticizing this situation through the film. According to Junaid (2017), the severe and satirical criticism employed in the film was very new in the cinema of Bangladesh (p. 74). Ghuddi was different from traditional Bangladeshi films, both in its form and content. Junaid (2017) discusses the self-reflexive style that the film employed, which is a technique used to make the audience aware that they are not watching any real happenings but a film (p. 76). With this style used at different times, the director criticizes the traditional commercial cinema, which never works to provoke any question about the existing situation of the people. The film also criticizes the leftist political leaders who are not working for the country when it was their duty to do so. With this, the film also criticizes the existing status quo, which does not serve the purpose of the independence which the country had achieved ten years ago through the brutal Liberation War. Dahan Dahan (Affliction, 1985), directed by Sheikh Niamat Ali, criticizes the social and political situation of Bangladesh in the 1980s. Though it was not very innovative in cinematic style, it dealt with critical social and political issues through its content. The director represented the post-independence political despair through the character of Munir’s maternal uncle. He also visualized different social problems through the activities of Munir. In a very subtle way, it portrayed the dissatisfaction under the military rule and discussed making a change in the existing system. In the veil of the concept of social stratification, which Munir tries to explain to his student, the film talks about social

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injustice, and in the end, through the anguish and outrage of Munir, the director voices protest against the social and political injustice.

Chaka The film Chaka (The Wheel, 1993) was adapted from Selim Al Deen’s drama Chaka under the direction of Morshedul Islam. It was produced in the context of a democratic administration, which had been established after the mass uprising against the autocratic government in Bangladesh in the year 1990. The key concern of the drama which Selim Al Deen had written was to deal with how the state imposes the liability of an unlawful death over the marginal people (Ashraf, 2015). The film presented the same message. It criticized the state for being irresponsible to the responsibility is has towards its people. Although the film did not employ any notable formal experiment, it was outspoken in its message. Chitra Nodir Pare

Chitra Nodir Pare (Quiet Flows The River Chitra, 1999) is a cinema directed by Tanvir Mokammel which sketches the consequences of the partition of Bengal in 1947. It portrayed the problems faced by the minorities from 1940s to 1960s, but with this, it also points out the contemporary problems faced by the minorities in Bangladesh. It criticizes the leftist political leaders for their inability to appeal to the majority of the people. In a very traditional language, through the contextual shadow of the then Pakistani government, the film criticized existing rulers who were not trying to solve social problems. Matir Moina Matir Moina (The Clay Bird, 2002), a movie directed by Tareque Masud, was set in the context of pre-independence Bangladesh. With the context of 1971, Masud dealt with the more recent problems of religious fundamentalism in the Islamist culture in Bangladesh. The

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film was made in a political context when Bangladesh was under the rule of a coalition government where Jamaat-e-Islami, the main Islamist political party in Bangladesh, was playing a vital role. A M M Shawkat Ali finds that this party was supporting the operation of various extremist forces (as cited in Junaid, 2013, p. 226). Masud voiced his criticism towards Islamist fundamentalism in this critical political situation through Matir Moina.

Runway In his last feature film, Runway (2010), Tareque Masud stood against religious militancy. In an urban setting, he showed how Islamist extremists misinterpret religious values to mislead people. In the context of growing Islamist fanaticism in Bangladesh, this film works to intervene in the critical situation to take a stance against Islamist militancy.

Politically Conscious Documentaries A number of documentaries had been made at the time of the Liberation War of Bangladesh when it seemed that the outer world must be informed about the brutality of the war and the struggle and protest of the people. The provisional government of Bangladesh, situated in India, commissioned Zahir Raihan to make documentaries about the war (Junaid, 2013, p. 81). He directed two of the four documentaries made at that time, but he was also involved in the production of the other two. His documentary Stop Genocide (1971) focused on the mass killing of the people by the Pakistani armed forces, the distress of the people of Bangladesh due to the war who were taking refuge in the neighbouring country India and living painful lives in the refugee camp. With the visual documents of the genocide and the supporting voice over, the documentary worked to attain international attention towards the Liberation War of

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Bangladesh and the brutality of the Pakistani army. It urged its audience to take action to stop the genocide. Raihan’s other documentary A State is Born (1971) upheld the background of the war and the way the people joined in the protest and war to free the motherland. It focused on establishing the birth of the country through the brutal war. Alamgir Kabir in his Liberation Fighters (1971) focused on the war preparations taken by the freedom fighters of Bangladesh. The fourth film, Innocent Millions (1971), directed by Babul Chowdhury, portrayed the sufferings of the innocent Bangladeshi children in the refugee camps at the time of war. It showed the scarcity of food, unhealthy environment and painful deaths in the refugee camps. All four documentaries were made to display the struggle of the people of Bangladesh, their sufferings and their zeal for freedom, the brutality of West Pakistan and the consequences of the war, which worked to establish the necessity of discussion about these facts in the world politics and gather the international support.

Chapter Three

Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973): A Politically Conscious Attempt in Filmmaking in the Post-independence Bangladesh Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971. The newly formed government started its journey by taking on the great responsibility of establishing a better society—a demand of the people involved in the struggle for liberation. However, the new and improved societal order brought forth critical socio-political conditions for the people of Bangladesh. Hence, an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion spread among the populace, making it difficult for them to believe the promise of a new, stable, equal social formation. Abar Tora Manush Ho was an immediate reaction to the unstable socio-political conditions of early 1970s. The film was released in 1973 and with its severe political content, it raised important questions about the existing status quo.

Socio-political Context Having fought a brutal and bloody Liberation War for nine months, Bangladesh achieved independence on the 16th of December, 1971. After achieving a sovereign identity, the country had to deal with different problems that emerged in the post-war society. Wide-spread corruption cropped up in almost every sphere of life, leading to great distress of the common people. Bangladesh: Bahattar Theke Panchattar, edited by Munir Uddin Ahmad, is a book of news report compilations (collected from several national newspapers published between 1972 and 1975) which paints a picture of the then society. It provides extensive reports on different issues, such as: degradation of law and order, corruption in various fields, the emergence of a black-

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market, smuggling, extreme price hike of essential goods and so on. The news reports of the time period reveal that the price of essential goods kept increasing at an excessive rate. A statistic published in The Daily Ittefaq, on the 7th October of 1972 shows that from January of 1971 to August of 1972, the prices of goods like rice, mustard oil, milk powder, sugar, clothes, etc. had increased 2.5 to 3 times in just 18 months (Ahmad M. U., 1980, p. 374). According to Mohiuddin Ahmad (2020), The economic condition of the people of Bangladesh was getting worse day by day. On the one hand, the war-torn infrastructure was being reformed; on the other hand, the prices of goods were increasing… The price of goods increased by three times. (p. 93) The reports in newspapers also show that jute, rice, chicken, cattle, medicine, molasses, cloths and other similar essential goods were smuggled out of the country at excessive rates through border areas (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 125-138). A statistic confirms that in the three years after liberation, goods of approximately 5060 crore Tk had been smuggled out of Bangladesh (Ahmad M. U., p. 138). As mentioned before, corruption pervaded every social stratum. Different business permits were issued for the cronies of the government representatives (Ahmad M. U., p. 53) and the same person was issued more than one license under different names (Ahmad M. U., p. 61). According to Ahmad (2020), instead of professional traders, dealership licenses were issued for the party people of the then ruling party, Awami League (p. 83). Among them, most of the dealership holders sold their permits to professional traders at a high price (Ahmad M., p. 83). Different traders created an artificial crisis of essential goods in the market to raise the price (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 62-63). Fake ration cards were issued to take away the ration goods meant for the struggling populace of the country (Ahmad M. U., p. 61).

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Law and order faced a serious crisis of degradation in the postwar period. A vast number of firearms were left uncollected. More than three and a half lac firearms were left among the people just after the liberation (Mascarenhas, 2019, pp. 23-24). After Liberation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had asked the people of Bangladesh to submit all arms by 31st January of 1971, but only around thirty thousand were submitted (Mascarenhas, p. 33). Additionally, not all members of the liberation force surrendered their arms, especially those belonging to certain regional forces; some pro-China far-left members of these forces had a different target than achieving independence—they had also sought to eliminate class enemies (Alam A. U., 2014, p. 55). Some freedom fighters also hid weapons to exert power on their respective areas (Alam A. U., p. 56). On the 31st of January 1971, the members of Mujib Bahini (also known as Bangladesh Liberation Force) surrendered their weapons at the Dhaka Stadium (Parvez, 2015, pp. 116-117). However, later, a large number of the guns was returned to the members of the force in different districts of the country. In 1972, a new political party Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASAD) or National Socialist Party of Bangladesh was formed by some of the activists of Bangladesh Students’ League who believed in the ideology of scientific socialism (Ranga, 2020). The party also formed an armed wing named Gonobahini in 1974 (Ranga, 2020). Some members of Mujib Bahini who still had the arms which had been returned to them after 31st January of 1972, joined Gonobahini (Parvez, 2015, p. 117). Gonobahini used those arms in different clashes against Rakkhi Bahini and Lal Bahini (Parvez, 2015, p. 117). The availability of firearms, whether it was in secret and out in the open; political backing for criminals and so on, worked to increase the rate of criminal offence in society (Ahmad M., 2020, p.

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184). Newspaper reports highlight that the situation was so dire that mugging, attacks on police officers to hijack firearms, murders, etc. were occurring almost daily (Ahmad M., 2020, pp. 184-185). From 1972 to 1973, in just one year, there were 17341 cases of mugging, 2039 cases of general robbery, 31 cases of bank robbery, and 1467 cases of assassination (Ahmad M. U., 1980, p. 6). According to A K Khondkar, a few misguided freedom fighters were involved in some acts of anarchy, but most of the crimes were committed by the opportunists who were never involved in the war but had started looting in the guise of freedom fighters and this caused a massive blow to the image of freedom fighters (Khondkar et al., 2009, pp. 138, 145). The Liberation Force of Bangladesh consisted of the general people of the nation. Of the entire force, only seven thousand were the members of the armed forces, and the rest, comprised of more than one lac people, were from the civil populace who were called the Gono Bahini (the people’s army) (Huda, 2010, p. 49). The people’s army was made up of people from all walks of life, including students, day labourers, peasants, fishermen and public transport drivers (Bhuiyan, 2010, p. 22). The post-war government decided to form a national militia force with the freedom fighters and the members of the recently dissolved East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) to guard the country borders, support the police force and maintain internal law and order (Alam A. U., 2014, p. 21). However, a clash occurred at EPR headquarters on 16 February, 1972. The clash was between the freedom fighters and the members of EPR who had not participated in the Liberation War. This incident forced the government to change its decision (Ahmad M., 2020, pp. 72-73). Instead of a national militia force, a paramilitary force, Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini was formed on the 8 March, 1972

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(Ahmad M., p. 73) with 8000 members chosen from the Liberation Force (Mascarenhas, 2019, p. 42). The force was formed to recover illegal weapons, prevent smuggling, and support the police force to maintain peace and order. However, later on the force was severely accused of violating human rights (Ahmad M., 2020, p. 73). In his book, Rakkhibahinir Shotto-Mittha, Anwar Ul Alam, the assistant director of the force, stated that, in the beginning, the economic support and facilities provided for the members of the force were insufficient. After its establishment, freedom fighters from different areas of the country came to the headquarters at Dhaka to join the force, but it was not possible to offer membership to all of them (Alam A. U., 2014, p. 37). According to Alam (2014), the higher authorities in the government were not paying attention to the distress of the thousands of freedom fighters who were struggling to feed themselves, cloth themselves, and find homes to live in (p. 40). He identifies the recruitment of people with anti-independence ideologies in vital administrative positions as the reason behind the distress of the freedom fighters at the time. These higher-ups were creating obstacles for the government to include freedom fighters in the maintenance of law and order (Alam, p. 40). The Rakkhi Bahini was under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Taslim Ahmed, a pro-Pakistan individual, was appointed as the Home Secretary of Bangladesh (Alam A. U., p. 20). Several people with a similar stance as Taslim Ahmed were also appointed to different vital positions. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Shafayet Jamil described this in his book, Ekattorer Muktijuddho, Roktakto Moddho-August O Shorojontromoy November. He stated that, Lieutenant Colonel Feroz Salahuddin was appointed as the Military Secretary of the President of Bangladesh after independence, who had in fact worked as the chief recruiting officer of Razakars, an antiBangladesh paramilitary force, formed in the time of the Liberation War by the Pakistan Army (Jamil, 2009, pp. 95-96).

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The real freedom fighters were living lives as the underprivileged class in Bangladesh. The Rakkhi Bahini was mainly formed by recruiting the members of the Kaderia Bahini (Force of Kader) and the Mujib Bahini. These two were also known under the umbrella term: the Bangladesh Liberation Force (BLF) (Chowdhury, 2018, p. 36). The Kaderia Bahini was one of the most significant civilian forces, led by Abdul Kader Siddique, a former soldier of the Pakistan Army. The Mujib Bahini was an independent force formed by the activists of Awami League and its student front ‘Chhatro League (Student League)’, which was not under the command of the provisional government of Bangladesh and allied forces. (Chowdhury, 2018, p. 36). The Rakkhi Bahini had started operating with 8000 members, and before long, it became a force of 25,000 members (Mascarenhas, 2019, p. 42). Anwar Ul Alam, in his book, discusses the distress of the freedom fighters at the beginning of the formation of the force. However, he does not provide any information about what had happened to the rest of the members of the Liberation Force, as the Gono Bahini (the people’s army), was a force of more than one lac members (Huda, 2010, p. 49). In his book, Bittersweet Victory: A Freedom Fighter’s Tale, Abdul Qayyum Khan stated that the plan of forming a national militia force was cancelled and the members of the Gono Bahini (the people’s army) were asked to leave after they had been paid 50 Tk as one month’s salary (as cited in Junaid, 2017, p. 19). It created great dissatisfaction and despair among the freedom fighters. A considerable number of freedom fighters, who had come from various parts of the country to join the war, were asked to return to those places (Uddin, 1997, p. 28). The unarmed soldiers found themselves to be needless in the post-independence society (Uddin, p. 28).

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Just after the war, when the government had asked everyone to surrender their arms, some freedom fighters faced a dilemma. Weapons were easily available at that time. After being defeated in the war, the Pakistan army had left a large number of weapons in Bangladesh which were then stolen by thieves, robbers, miscreants, and had not yet been recovered by the government (Islam, 1997, p. 247). Again, not all of the supporting forces of the Pakistan army, such as Razakars, Al Badr, Al Shams had surrendered weapons up until that point (Islam, p. 247). Therefore, the freedom fighters were always under the threat of being attacked by the anti-liberation forces (Islam, p. 247). On the other hand, as members of the liberation forces, it was their duty to obey the order to surrender the arms. The situation being thus, the freedom fighters began to feel that even before the passing of a month in independent Bangladesh, they had become the burden of the country (Islam, 1997, p. 247). This anxiety proved to be true when they were asked to go back home instead of forming a national militia force with them (S. R. Mirza in Khondkar et al., 2009, p. 137). On the other side, a number of opportunistic people, who had not fought in the war, started to reap the fruits of the country’s liberation. Right after the liberation, a group of frauds who had not participated in the war, or used to be direct or indirect supporters of the Pakistan army, started introducing themselves as freedom fighters. As the country had achieved its independence on the 16th of December, 1971— and these opportunists had started to introduce themselves as freedom fighters just after the war, they were named the ‘16th Division’ by the people (Islam, 1997, p. 229). They were also called ‘Friday Fighters’ (FF) as the very next day, 17th December, 1971 happened to be a Friday (Chowdhury, 2018, p. 53). Again, these opportunists also managed to get themselves certified as freedom fighters. Just after the war, with the signature of the Liberation War’s Commander-in-Chief M A G Osmani,

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thousands of certificates were issued (S. R. Mirza in Khondkar et al., 2009, p. 137) without any verification, even to such people who never had any direct or indirect contribution in the war (Chowdhury, 2018, pp. 51-52). In 1971, emphasizing the importance of recruiting freedom fighters in government service, The Bangladesh Public Service Commission appointed 350 officers based just on an oral examination (Ahmad M., 2020, p. 82). Yet, there were complaints that not even 50% of the appointees were freedom fighters (Ahmad M., p. 82). The actual freedom fighters were deprived of their rights in different ways. After the Liberation War, the freedom fighters wanted to involve themselves in the development of the country, but the then government had no constructive plan to make proper use of the enthusiasm of the fighters in the process of national reconstruction (Ahmed M., 2016, pp. 54-55). The role of the freedom fighters in the process of liberation was not given proper appreciation; no law was enacted to specify their ranks (Ahmed M., pp. 54-55).

Poster: Abar Tora Manush Ho

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Abar Tora Manush Ho: Storyline The cinema starts with a title card alluding to a widely circulated quotation of the father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman— ‘Sonar Bangla gorte hole sonar manush chai’, which means, to build a golden (great) Bengal, we need golden (great) people. The title card also says that this cinema is dedicated to those who turned into gold (meaning great) by burning in the fire of the Liberation War. The opening sequence shows one of the most wellknown sculptures of Bangladesh, Aparajeo Bangla (Unvanquished Bengal), which was under construction at the time. A song is played in the background as a dedication to the freedom fighters of the country, which also indicates their recent miseries. The entire cinema depicts several events centering around the seven key characters. These seven characters had been students of Bangabani College, and joined the War of Liberation in 1971. After coming back from war, the seven friends, Shona, Hira, Kanchan, Manik, Panna, Ratan, and Chuni begin to observe the unstable social condition of the nation. They all find themselves in a corrupted society where real freedom fighters have no dignity left and can only suffer. Though the war had ended, the fighters had not yet surrendered their arms. Shona finds a medicine shop which was selling medicines at a high price without providing any receipts. Hira discovers a ration dealer unwilling to provide rice to the people—making excuses about not having adequate supply but hides the rice sacks. Kanchan captures a Kerosene dealer who was smuggling Kerosene barrels rather than sell them to the general people—by lying about a supply deficit. These characters then protest against these corruptions and make the commodities open for the general people using the power of their guns. Other friends help them. The Police seem helpless in this anarchy. The corrupt dealers complain about this group of friends to their teacher, the principal of Bangabani College. The principal tries to convince them that they are not the authority to deal with this

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situation and asks them to get readmitted to the college. They all oblige and join the college. The principal arranges a reception ceremony for the freedom fighters where Manik’s beloved, Neela, sings a song dedicated to the fighters. Neela takes Manik to meet her father, Afaz Uddin Chowdhury, who is a corrupt businessman. Because of Manik’s lower economic status, her father forbids Neela to continue her relationship with Manik. Mizan, son of the college principal, is also a friend of Kanchan. He manipulates Kanchan’s younger sister Meghla into falling in love with him and starts an affair with her. Mizan develops a business relation with Neela’s father, Afaz Uddin. He manages a fake freedom fighter certificate and a gun for himself, with the intention of starting an illegal business. He shows these to Afaz Uddin and says that money is flying in the air, one just needs to make the most of the situation. On the other hand, real freedom fighters live out a punishing existence due to their truthfulness. Shona’s father suffers severely as he has no money to buy medicines. Hira’s brother-in-law does not approve of Hira’s living in his house as he is not an earning member of the family. Manik cannot buy a dress for her mother due to the excessive price hike. Chuni and Panna watch in shock as a person buys a carton of expensive cigarettes where they hardly have enough money for a packet of cheap cigarettes. Afaz Uddin harshly insults Manik for continuing relationship with Neela. Shona’s father snubs Shona for not being able to earn for the family. Hira’s brother-in-law throws him out of his house. All of these social injustices hurt the group’s ethical beliefs. All but Manik start drinking. They all carry arms with them but refrain from using those unethically. Hira decides to use his gun to earn a living but Manik protests and reminds him the oath they had taken before joining the war. He discourages using guns for personal advantages and leaves them.

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With Neela’s encouragement, Manik starts preparing for his college examination. The other friends of the group come back to their senses after Manik’s protest and decide to sit for the exam as well. The principal exempts their fees and happily permits them to sit for the examination. But his own son, Mizan, refuses to continue his studies as he finds his illegal business to be more lucrative. In the examination hall, most of the students copy the answers directly from books. Though Manik does not intend to cheat, the other students provoke him into cheating. The principal finds Manik cheating and expels him from the examination. His six friends also boycott the examination in protest. Kanchan comes to know that Meghla is pregnant. He asks Mizan to marry Meghla, but Mizan does not accept himself to be the father of the baby and refuses to marry her. Angry at the principal’s decision to expel Manik in the examination hall, everyone in the group except Manik and Kanchan beat up the principal. Mizan files a case against the friends and the police starts looking for them to arrest them. Manik is furious upon finding out about the heinous act of his friends. During this time, an announcement through the radio asks freedom fighters to surrender their arms. The friends refuse to surrender the arms as they find the situation of the country to be still unstable. Moreover, they decide to use arms to ensure their living. Suddenly, Manik leaves the place and goes to Neela’s home with his gun. He asks Neela to leave the house with him. But Mizan attacks from behind and knocks him down. Neela’s father threatens to call the police unless she refuses Manik’s offer to leave with him. When Manik regains consciousness, Neela asks him to leave, lying and asserting that she had never truly loved him. Heartbroken, Manik leaves the place. Manik’s friends come back to their place with looted money and goods. Upon finding out about what happened, Kanchan advices

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Manik to forget Neela. Manik’s friends get involved in unethical jobs, but they do not seem happy doing these. Shona repents for their deeds by going to the Martyrs’ Monument. Ratan and Panna go to a Jalsha (a place to be entertained with music and dance), but Ratan does not permit the dancer to touch him, and Panna asks to sing Bengali songs. The principal realizes the reason behind the unexpected and criminal deeds of his students. While giving his statement to the police officer, he says that they did not attack him and asks the officer not to harass them. Though he is physically unwell, he goes to his students’ houses to inquire about their situation. He finds Manik at home and with his help, he assembles all seven students in his college office. The teacher convinces them to submit their arms to him. However, a sudden police raid forces them to flee. The principal goes to find the Police Super of the area and finds one of his former students, Rashid at the post. He asks Rashid to withdraw the warrants against his freedom fighter students. Rashid agrees to his proposal. But he lays out a condition: the students would have to surrender their arms to the police. The principal takes the responsibility and vouches for his students. Meghla goes to the principal’s house in search of Mizan. Mizan was not home, but his mother comes to know about what he had done to Meghla. When Mizan returns home, she asks him to marry Meghla, but he tells her that he is going to marry Afaz Uddin’s daughter Neela that very night. Mizan also goes to Meghla’s house to inform this to Meghla and adds that Meghla can do nothing but die. Meghla is terribly hurt, and decides to commit suicide. Returning home, Kanchan finds Meghla dead, with her body hanging from the ceiling. He and his friends complete her last rites. After burying her, Kanchan finds a letter that was written by Meghla before her death. He comes to know about Mizan’s marriage and

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goes to Afaz Uddin’s home with his friends to take revenge. After finding out about Mizan’s plans of marrying Neela, the principal and his wife also go to Afaz Uddin’s house to stop the wedding. Kanchan and his friends succeed in stopping the marriage. Kanchan asks Mizan for the last time to accept that he is guilty and the one at fault. The principal and his wife arrive at the place. When he goes upstairs, he finds Mizan killed by Kanchan. The principal also comes to know about Meghla’s suicide. Meanwhile, the police arrive—the principal surrenders to the police as the murderer of Mizan. The students try to stop him, but he does not listen to them. By taking the liability, he creates a route for the students to come into the light again. The students surrender their arms to the police. The principal asks her wife not to feel sorry for him. He reminds her of a song by Rabindranath Tagore which says, ‘if in the deep depths of desolation, the light of your bliss shines bright, then so be it’. The cinema ends with a title card which states that the cinema has been dedicated to the youths of Bangladesh by the people of Bangladesh.

Abar Tora Manush Ho: Political Criticism through the Transformation of Traditional Cinema Techniques Historicity Third Cinema uses history as a process to seek emancipation. According to Wayne (2001), the answers of the questions: who we are, why we are, and where we are, can be found through the exploration of history (p. 14). Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973) is set in the context of post-independence Bangladesh. The references to the post-liberation social conditions are evident in the cinema. Seven

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students of Bangabani college who had fought in the Liberation War in 1971, observe and go through the unstable social circumstances after their nation gains independence. They all possess firearms as they have not surrendered their weapons, and they protest against different social injustices with the power of their guns. Shona’s father suffers from a severe disease which needs proper medication. Shona’s sister, Moni, tries to get their father the medicines but fails. Moni informs her brother Shona that only Bela Pharmacy has the medicines, but they ask for a higher price than usual. On arriving at the store, Shona finds people requesting the vendor to sell them the drugs they need. The vendor denies having the medicine in stock at first, but when the buyers become desperate enough to pay any price, the vendor asks for a higher price and says that he will not provide any cash memo for the transaction. Shona observes this situation and asks for his father’s drugs. The vendor takes a look at Shona and says that he does not have the drug. Shona charges at him—the vendor had asked his sister to pay a high price for the medicine, but now he was downright lying about the medicines he had in stock. Shona beats the vendor, opens the pharmacy for all the customers, and asks them to collect the medicines they require. Newspaper reports in 1972 and 1973 show that there were vast crises of life-saving medicine in the pharmacies of the country (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 51, 61). This situation came to be because of the excessive smuggling of the medicines through the borders (Ahmad M. U., pp. 128, 129). In another scene, while Manik’s mother stitches his torn shirt, he tells her that he tried to buy a dress for her but could not, as the seller wanted 40 Tk for the dress whereas the original price was only 12 Tk. This scene refers to the excessive price hike of essential goods in the post-independence period. Several newspaper reports show that the cost of clothes was increased at a doubling rate after the liberation due

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to excessive corruption and mismanagement (Ahmad M. U., pp. 49, 63, 131). The price of the essential goods had been increased gradually up to 400% from 1971 to 1973 (Ahmad M. U., p. 377). Extreme corruption in distributing business licenses worked in the increase of prices of the essential goods (Ahmad M. U., pp. 51, 53, 76). In front of a ration shop, a long line of people becomes visible in a particular scene. Hira asks the dealer why he is not distributing rice among the people. The dealer states that the government has not supplied the rice yet. Hira checks stacked sacks inside the shop and finds a considerable amount of rice hidden. He slaps the dealer and orders the labourers to give the rice to the people. In the post-independence period, the government appointed a considerable number of dealers to market domestic and foreign products (Ahmad M. , 2020, p. 83). But instead of professionals, dealerships were mostly issued to the people of the political party in power (Ahmad M. , p. 83). Reports from different newspapers show that unscrupulous traders were involved in the black market of products such as cereals, cigarettes, cement, and ration rice (Ahmad M. U., 1980, p. 49). A large number of fake ration cards were issued (Ahmad M. U., pp. 61, 64, 83). Kanchan’s sister Meghla could not cook because they had no kerosene oil. She states that there is no kerosene available in the market. Kanchan goes looking for kerosene with his gun and finds kerosene barrels being smuggled out of the area by a trader. He beats the trader, and later he and his freedom fighter friends distribute the recovered kerosene to the people. Many news reports in the post-independence period confirm that the essential goods were being smuggled out of Bangladesh through the borders (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 125-137). A statistic published

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in November 1975 shows that in the three and a half years leading up to that time, goods of around 5060 crore Tk had been smuggled out of Bangladesh into India (Ahmad M. U., p. 138). The seven freedom fighters in the cinema protest against injustice and work to prevent corruption, smuggling, etc. using their guns. The Police are not active in the maintenance of law and order. On the other hand, it is the corrupted people who file complaints against the warriors. When the kerosene trader goes to the police station to complain about the freedom fighters, the officer states that this is the 13th case filed against them. The police officer admits his inability to do anything against them as they possess weapons. He asks the trader to go to a college professor, but he does not arrest the trader in spite of his blatant involvement in the smuggling. This highlights that the corrupt people could easily file cases against the freedom fighters who tried to prevent corruption, but the law enforcement authority did not enforce the law upon the very people who were openly dabbling in corruption. Many of the Awami League activists and leaders became involved in smuggling goods to India in the post-independence era (Ahmad M. , 2020, p. 83). They were involved in smuggling relief goods and ration goods as well as illegally encroaching land and houses, etc. (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 47-82). Some leaders and party members were also punished because of their corruption (Ahmad M. U., pp. 49, 51) but this did not reach a significant degree as in many cases, it was not even possible to complain against them (Ahmad M. U., p. 50). Law enforcement authorities were unable to punish black marketeers, smugglers, or other corrupted people because of the backing they had from the influential and political people (Ahmad M. U., pp. 49-50). The principal of Bangabani College, the character of the teacher

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in the film, wants his freedom fighter students to start living a normal life again. He asks them to join the college, stating that it is not their duty to ensure law and order of society. The government exists for this very reason. Through his dialogues, he tries to make them understand the reason behind this social instability that they face. For him, it is not so easy to establish a new society in a newly formed nation. The country had been under foreign rule and oppression for a long time. Prolonged poverty and deprivation had resulted in the gradual contamination of the nature of the people. A considerable amount of time had to pass to remedy or reverse this effect. Bangladesh, previously known as East Bengal, was under the British rule for 190 years and in 1947, British India split into two independent countries, India and Pakistan; and today’s Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan as a province of Pakistan (Monjur, 2004, p. 21). Bengalis were 56% of the total population of Pakistan, but were ruled by Pakistanis who never strived to facilitate the progress of the province (Monjur, p. 22). Instead, the people of East Pakistan were economically, politically, and culturally dominated by the West Pakistani rulers (Monjur, pp. 22-25). East Pakistan achieved its liberation from Pakistan in 1971, and it was named Bangladesh. The nation became independent after a long period of 213 years. The newly liberated country went through different kinds of issues, some of which are portrayed in Abar Tora Manush Ho. The people of the country expected a new, exploitation-free society after independence. But it is hardly an easy feat for a country to come out of the effects of colonial rule and cultural marginalization. The principal, with his dialogues, refers to the history of oppression the country had gone through and tries to make the freedom fighters understand the facts. The principal’s son Mizan and Neela’s father Afaz Uddin plan to take advantage of the post-war situation. To them, money is more

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important than ethics, and as Mizan says, money can buy everything. Mizan had not joined the war, but he manages to get certified as a freedom fighter and also procures a revolver. Showing him these, he tells Afaz Uddin that if there is money, nothing is impossible. He assures Afaz Uddin that he will also manage the licenses for him. On a different day, Mizan takes a bundle of cash from Afaz Uddin and promises to manage another license for him. This indicates that he had already managed one or more licenses for Afaz Uddin earlier. Later, the principal finds that a business license, having the value of 18000 Tk has been issued in the name of his son Mizan. All of these events refer to the post-war situation where managing business licenses, freedom fighter’s certificates had become very easy for a certain group of people. Just after the liberation, thousands of freedom fighter certificates were issued without any verification— certificates, bearing the signature of the Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation War M A G Osmani (S. R. Mirza in Khondkar et al., p. 137). Business licenses were issued mostly among the government cronies (Ahmad M. U., p. 53) instead of professional traders (Ahmad M. , p. 83). Again, the same person had different business licenses under different names (Ahmad M. U., p. 61). Afaz Uddin also has a discussion about trafficking a truck of relief goods with Mizan, as it seems very profitable. The war-torn country had received huge amounts of relief goods from different countries after liberation. But the relief goods did not properly reach the people in need (Ahmad M. U., p. 79). Several news reports show that different relief goods such as: rice, wheat, blanket, milk powder, cloth, and all the essential commodities had been plundered with the help of people in power during the post-independence period (Ahmad M. U., pp. 71-88).

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Afaz Uddin discussing illegal business plans with Mizan

Listening to the government announcement asking people to surrender their arms on the radio, Ratan opens fire with his gun. He criticizes the call for surrendering weapons. For him, it is not the right time to surrender arms as peace has not yet been ensured in the country. Enemies are still lurking around them. Gesturing towards Chuni, he says that Chuni conducted an operation at the house of the chairman of the peace committee in the time of war. But now after the war, a lad of that house is searching for Chuni to kill him, in the guise of being a freedom fighter, a member of 16th division. In another scene, where Chuni and Panna go to buy cigarettes, they see a welldressed young man with a Sten gun on his back asking the seller to give him a carton of expensive State Express 555 cigarettes. The man takes the carton and leaves in his car. The seller looks at Panna and Chuni and snarls, ‘the country’s been liberated for their sakes! You and I are nothings but bugs—mosquitoes and flies. Who the heck cares about us?’. The sarcastic comment and expression of the seller indicate that this young man is a member of the 16th division, now roaming around in the guise of a freedom fighter.

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Fake freedom fighter (Sixteenth Division) buying costly cigarettes

East Pakistan Central Peace Committee, also known as the Peace Committee, is one of the bodies formed to help the Pakistan army against the liberation forces of Bangladesh in 1971 (Hossain, 2019). After independence, a few opportunists collected weapons and started introducing themselves as freedom fighters to enjoy the benefits of liberation, who were known as the 16th Division (Islam, 1997, p. 229). These fake freedom fighters were involved in different terrorist activities after the war, smearing the name of the real freedom fighters (Khondkar et al., 2009, pp. 138, 145). Furthermore, the postwar period observed a total collapse in the legal system. Criminal offences like bank robbery, mugging, attack on police officers and hijacking of firearms, murders, etc. increased at an alarming rate, creating a frightening situation. The government was not able to ensure the security of the people. Through Ratan’s dialogue, the cinema indicates the anarchical condition of the country and also points an accusing finger towards the opportunists who enjoyed the blessings of living in an independent country by depriving the real freedom fighters.

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Feeling far too depressed, the group of freedom fighter friends become involved in unethical lines of work. Though the cinema never directly shows their activities, it is implied that they earn money illegally. They also drink alcohol and enjoy the performances of women in Jalsha, spending a massive amount of money. But they feel guilty for their deeds. On a certain night, Shona stops their car by the Shaheed Minar (Central Martyr Monument). Shona, Hira, and Chuni stand in front of the monument. Addressing the martyrs, Shona says that martyredom has relieved the people who had sacrificed themselves. He continues, ‘We have survived but been tainted. We have broken all the oaths we all had sworn along with you. Forgive us.’ While stepping down from the monument premises, they find an older man sitting beside the monument. When Hira asks him what he is doing there at such a late hour, he replies that he is guarding the graves. Chuni asks him to go back home, but he says that his house has been burnt; therefore, he sits by the graves of his sons. This sequence may seem contradictory in relation to Third Cinema’s commitment to historical specificity. After the formation of Pakistan, the then rulers decided to make Urdu the only state language of Pakistan whereas Urdu speakers were only 7.2% of the population and Bengali speakers were 54.6% (Monjur, 2004, p. 36). The people of Bengal did not take this sitting down and mass dissatisfaction transformed into a movement which is now known as the Bengali Language Movement. Student protesters played a significant role in that movement. On 21st February of 1952, they called for a strike, defying the section 144 issued by the government. On this very day, the police opened fire on a mass procession; three students were killed (Umor, 1993, p. 459) and many more were injured and arrested (Monjur, 2004, p. 45). Another five were killed, and more than 50 were injured the next day (Umor, 1993, p. 461).

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On 23rd February, a martyrs’ monument was built in front of the Dhaka Medical College hostel where the first student was killed, but the police demolished it on the 26th (Umor, p. 463). In the following days, the situation went out of control, and as a result the government at last recognized Bengali as one of the state languages in 1956 (Monjur, 2004, p. 45). The monument, which the cinema shows, was built in 1963. When Shona addresses the martyrs and says that, ‘We have broken all the oaths we had sworn along with you’, it raises question. The martyrs of the Language Movement had died about 20 years ago, in 1952. Shona, Hira, and Panna seem too young to take oaths with the martyrs in 1952. The same question is valid when we consider the old man’s claims to guard his sons’ graves. But the cinema sets this sequence in a broader context. The struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh is not an event spanning across the time period of a few years. After the partition of British India, East Bengal was dominated under the rule of West Pakistan. From then on, the rulers started exploiting the people of East Bengal, and the struggle for the liberation started simultaneously. The language movement was the first direct protest against the cultural oppression which worked as a source of motivation for the later critical political events of 1954, 1962, 1966, 1969, and 1971. All the people who sacrificed their lives in the process of gaining liberation during this extended period, are thus related to the very first event of protest—all the activists involved in the struggle, therefore, had sworn the same oaths. Thus, with this sequence, the cinema glorifies the entire process of the struggle for emancipation. For Wayne (2001), “history is the great explainer” (p. 14). Thus, Abar Tora Manush Ho, uses history to explain the socio-political context the cinema is set in and takes this as a process in its search for actual emancipation.

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Politicization Third Cinema aims to raise political consciousness among the audience. It initiates a process to make the oppressed ones conscious about their real condition, which works to activate them to do something about it (Wayne, 2001, p. 16). Through the first few sequences, Abar Tora Manush Ho establishes the post-independence social context. Medicines are hardly available in the market. Taking advantage of the situation, the shrewd seller asks for a higher price. People cannot get rice from the ration shop as a devious dealer claims there is a scarcity of rice and blames the government. There is no kerosene oil in the local markets, whereas a corrupt kerosene oil dealer is trafficking kerosene out of the region. The general people cannot buy clothes as the price of clothes has increased by more than 300%. With the depiction of these events, the cinema establishes the ongoing problems in society and also indicates the reason behind this chaos. By presenting these events, the cinema endeavors to prepare the audience for the rest of the cinema and also reveal the social condition the characters are living in. With the seven freedom fighters, the cinema portrays the distress of most of the real freedom fighters who ensured the liberation of the country through a terrible war. When the war began, people of the country joined the war at any cost, leaving behind their families, homes and everything else. When they came back from the war, they were astounded to observe a new society where nothing is like it was before. Many of them had lost their families; their homes were burnt to ashes, their loved ones were killed. In addition to these tragedies, they also found themselves unwanted in the post-independence condition. They suffered a lot due to different social, economical and political reasons. In the cinema, the fighters are struggling against

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awful economic conditions. All seven friends keep their weapons, but they do not use those to earn illegally. Their honesty leades them to more distress. Shona’s father suffers from a complex disease, but Shona is not able to manage money to buy medicine. Poverty compels his father to call his son worthless as Shona cannot earn a living to support his family. Hira lives with his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law does not like him as he does not earn any money. Neela’s father does not want her to be in a relationship with Manik as Manik is from a low-income family. The rest of the friends also go through similar experiences. Chuni and Panna can hardly afford a packet of cheap cigarettes. All these events work to make the spectators aware of the real state of the freedom fighters. The cinema introduces the spectators to another group of people in society. These people are the privileged ones. Afaz Uddin is a businessman who plans to start an illegal business with Mizan. Mizan is an opportunististic, dishonest young man who can do anything for money. He had not joined the Liberation War but manages a freedom fighter certificate and a gun in exchange for cash. For him, money is flying in the air; all one needs to do is to grab it. He also manages business licenses for himself and Afaz Uddin. Afaz Uddin plans with Mizan to loot relief goods as well. To broaden the vision of the spectator, the cinema thus offers two opposite sides of the society where the general people and patriots are suffering from poverty, deprivation, falling into despair and some dishonest, fraudulent people who are taking advantage of the chaos in the newly liberated country. Along with exposing the context, the cinema also raises questions against social inequalities. Manik tells his mother that he could not buy a dress for her as the seller wanted 40 Tk for a 12 Tk dress. But there were many people buying dresses which were priced at 500 to 1000 Tk. Hearing this, Manik’s mother is surprised and questions

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where they found so much money when the people of the country are in distress. This question points at the people who have become wealthy in illegal ways; who have been taking away the rights of the common people in the post-war context and therefore, works to create a consciousness among the audience.

Manik’s mother sewing his torn shirt

In another scene, when a fake freedom fighter (the 16th division) buys a carton of a cigarette with a gun hanging on his back, the seller sarcastically tells Chuni and Panna that, Sir, what are you looking at? The country’s been liberated for their sakes! You and I are nothing but bugs—mosquitoes and flies. Who the heck cares about us? After Neela rejects Manik’s proposal to go with him and asks him to forget her, Manik bursts into tears and tells Kanchan that Neela was his source of courage at the time of war. She was his inspiration.

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He used to think that, if the country becomes independent, he would be able to marry her. But now, Neela has rejected him. He asks Kanchan, what has he gained from joining the Liberation War? This question may seem very emotional and personal, but if we consider the entire socio-political context, this question becomes a significant and important one. The freedom fighters of the country joined the war to establish a society free of exploitation—where justice will be ensured. But the post-war situation did not live up to their expectations. In the cinema, the freedom fighters are insulted and deprived in every sphere of society. Shona and Hira become neglected in their families. Shona’s father rebukes him for his inability to earn which makes Shona leave home. Hira’s brother-in-law throws Hira out of his house and Neela’s father harshly insults Manik for continuing his relationship with Neela. Corrupted people go to police stations to file several cases against the freedom fighters as they protest against crime. Police do not arrest the real criminals but search for the fighters to arrest them. Corruption pervades society. Freedom fighters and the common people are in distress, whereas dishonest, corrupted, opportunists enjoy the highest privilege in society. All of these events justify Manik’s question in the bigger context. With this, the cinema, in a very subtle way, works to create a sympathy towards the oppressed and consciousness among the audience. When the principal goes to Shona’s house to look for him, Shona’s sick father asks the principal why Shona had become tainted even though he was under the supervision of the principal. It is not only the question of a despairing father to his son’s teacher, but a general question to the people holding different significant positions who are supposed to work in order to establish a better society. The principal here is just a representative of the people in such pivotal positions.

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Shona’s father complaining about his son to the principal

When the principal reproaches all seven fighters for their derailed state, Kanchan replies with grief that the principal has only watched them on the derailed track but, he has not tried to figure out the reason that triggered their situation. He asks if the principal has ever made an effort to understand them; has he ever felt their inner pain?

Kanchan complains to the principal

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This question is directed towards the people who observe and expose only the worse side of the derailed freedom fighters but do not think about the reason behind their downfall. With this question, the cinema signifies the uneven social system which is actively working behind the transformation of good into evil.

Abar Tora Manush Ho also initiates various discussions. The discussions are mostly introduced through the college principal’s comments. In his comments, he severely criticizes social instability and also expresses his hopes for true emancipation. Coming back from the war, the freedom fighter friends work to ensure social stability and protest against injustice. As they have not surrendered their weapons yet, they become guilty in the eye of law. The college principal asks the freedom fighters to join the college again. He tries to make them realize what their responsibilities are. During this time, he says that everyone has gone crazy to ensure their own advantage, whereas people were expected to work together for the progress of the war-torn country. With this dialogue, the principal intensely criticizes those who were busy securing their own futures through illegal undertakings instead of thinking about the future of the country. In a discussion with his wife, the principal makes a comment about the seven freedom fighters. He says that, ‘No matter what people think, I know they are honest.’ Similarly, when the group of friends decide to sit for the examination, the principal tells his office staff Shomoy, ‘They are my good children, I have all the information about them, no matter who says what, they never do any injustice.’ After being insulted by his brother-in-law, Hira leaves his sister’s house and tells to his friends that from that point on, he will use his gun to earn money illegally. All the other friends seem to tacitly agree with his decision, but Manik does not. Although he is insulted by

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Neela’s father, he stands up to Hira’s decision. He slaps Hira and responds in anger— Use the weapon to loot! Had you not once sworn upon this very weapon that you will never use it for any personal gain? Had you not once sworn upon this soil that you will never commit any crime standing on the very heart of this mother-like land? Today, you are prioritizing your own sorrow above all else, aren’t you? This intense reaction not only appeases the sudden wrath of Hira towards the society but also works to convince him not to walk on the wrong path. And thus, the cinema works to sharpen the audience’s concept of right and wrong. This reminds the citizens of their duty towards the country and teaches not to place personal interest ahead of the benefit of the motherland.

Manik slaps Hira

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The cinema portrays all the freedom fighters in a positive way. It shows them taking a stance against social injustice. It also highlights the fake freedom fighters (the 16th division) as the culprits behind the anarchies. Besides these portrayals, with the dialogues of the principal, the cinema attempts to provide a clear image of the real freedom fighters to the audience. Thus the cinema works to make people conscious about the reality of the situation, instigates the audience to stand against injustice, and shows the light of hope for real emancipation. According to Wayne (2001), positioning the spectators in the place of the exploited is another way of politicizing the viewers (p. 17). The narrative of Abar Tora Manush Ho centres around the story of seven freedom fighters being exploited in a post-independence scenario. Additionally, the characters observe the post-liberation unstable sociopolitical context. When Shona and Hira are castigated by their families, Manik is insulted by Afaz Uddin, Kanchan’s sister Meghla is deceived by Mizan, Chuni and Panna are made to feel insignificant in front of a fake freedom fighter, the cinema positions the spectators in the place of those characters and makes them feel humiliated, insulted, deceived and depressed and works to politicize them. After being expelled from the examination hall, Manik feels depressed. All his other friends except Kanchan, beat up the principal to take revenge. Mizan, the son of the principal, files a case against the students. On the radio news, according to the information provided by the police, Manik and Kanchan are announced as the main culprits of the offence. However, none of them were present in the crime scene, and they did not even know about the plan. Mizan, who had filed the complaint, is a criminal who is about to marry Neela, daughter of a wealthy, corrupt businessman. But Neela loves Manik. If Manik could be proven guilty, it would help clear the way for Mizan to marry Neela. It does not matter whether the police are involved in framing Manik

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and Kanchan, or if it simply due to their lack of skills because of the lack of their skills, through this incident, the cinema exposes the impotence of the police force in the post-war period. According to Ahmad (2020), the postwar period observed a total collapse in the legal system as criminal offences like mugging, attacks on the police, hijacking of firearms, murders, etc. increased at an alarming rate leading to a frightening situation (pp. 184-185). Different news reports in the post-war period show that the law enforcement authority was unable to punish black marketeers, smugglers, or other corrupt people as they had the support of influential and political people (Ahmad M. U., 1980, pp. 49-50). Here, the cinema exposes the weakness of the police force and also informs the audience of the reasons working behind it. Thus, it provides the audience with a clear view of the sociopolitical condition, which indirectly works to create political consciousness among them. The cinema also intends to educate the audience. Hira beats the ration dealer when he finds the dealer not distributing rice among the people, despite having adequate rice in stock. When he turns to the employees of the store, they cry out in fear and say that they are not guilty. Their words may seem true as they only do what their master says. But Hira retorts with anger that the people who commit injustice and the people who tolerate or support those actions, are all guilty. With this, the cinema teaches the audience not to do or support injustice in any situation. Again, when the principal requests his freedom fighter students to join the college once more, he tries to explain the reasons behind the ongoing social unrest. For him, the establishment of a new society is not a very easy process. Hundreds of years of poverty and deprivation had contaminated the nature of the people of this nation. A long time needs to pass in order to come out of the effect of colonial oppression. When he says this, he gazes directly at the camera. Thus, with this dialogue, the cinema initiates

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an explicit moral schooling and an implicit attempt to raise political consciousness among the audience. The director strictly criticizes the false promises made by dishonest political leaders of the country through this cinema. In the examination hall, most of the students are seen to be cheating. One of the students even brings out a knife to frighten the invigilators. Manik does not intend to cheat at first, but one of his friends persuades him by providing a book. As soon as he intends to open the book, the principal enters the room. All the other students hide whatever they had been using to cheat, but Manik gets caught redhanded. The principal seizes his answer sheet and says—‘I love all my students, but I will not tolerate this fraudulence in an examination. You can see how I punished a beloved student like Manik. Learn a lesson from this.’ Manik is expelled from the examination hall; his friends also leave the hall. In a later conversation, Shona mocks the principal saying—‘I adore you, I love Manik—damn Paltan speech, all those boastful words, does he not know that Manik’s life will be ruined, if he cannot pass the examination?’ The principal is a kind-hearted, student-friendly man. But at the same time he is very honest, strict in his ideology with a strong ethical ground. From his perspective, it may seem right to expel Manik. But Manik was not the only one who was cheating in the examination hall. Although only Manik was caught red-handed by the principal, he was not in the dark about the other students who had cheated. From this viewpoint, expelling only Manik seems quite unfair, and the words of the principal in the examination hall seem inappropriate. That is why Shona mocks the principal’s words and compares them to a ‘Paltan’s speech’. Paltan is a historically significant place situated in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The Paltan Ground was one of the most renowned public assembly places both before and after the

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independence of the country (Kashem, 2017). Different important political assemblies were held at this the site. Political leaders have uttered various political promises here. Before the independence of Bangladesh, the key commitment was to establish an exploitation-free independent country. Then the country became independent, but the dream of an exploitation-free society never came true. Instead, there was severe societal unrest. All those political promises seemed like nothing but conceited words. Through the dialogue of Shona, the cinema thus highlights and criticizes the incapability of the political leaders and exposes their vague promises to the audience. In the end, the principal pretends to be the murderer of Mizan to save Kanchan. He sacrifices himself for the greater good. The sacrifice of the principal in the cinema is a symbolic one. With this, the director urges all the people of the society to develop an aptitude for sacrifice, an outlook of togetherness. This can be better understood in the broader context of the whole cinema. In the beginning, in discussion with the freedom fighters, the principal says that everyone has gone crazy to ensure their own good, whereas people were expected to work together for the progress of the war-torn country. Sacrificing himself for the greater good, the principal asks those people to stand together by setting himself as an example. His actions also urge families that are similar to Hira’s and Shona’s. His actions urge the people who are in a position to do something. Overall, his actions urge the audience to be conscious of their surroundings and work together to seek real human emancipation.

Critical Commitment According to Wayne (2001), Third Cinema has a critical commitment of being neither a bearer of propaganda nor an objective observer of the crisis situation (p. 18); moreover, it needs to seek human emancipation standing against the status quo.

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Abar Tora Manush Ho portrays the unstable socio-political condition of the post-liberation period in Bangladesh. It shows the scarcity of essential goods in the market and also shows the reasons behind this. It addresses the excessive price hike of the commodities and also reveals the culprits who were behind this phenomena. People are unable to get rationed rice because dealers create an artificial crisis by hiding the sacks of rice meant for distribution. Kerosene oil is unavailable in the shops as the traders are involved in smuggling. People suffer from the scarcity of every day goods needed for living whereas Afaz Uddin and Mizan plan to loot relief goods. These corrupt businessmen manage a range of business licenses and thus control the market system. Real freedom fighters are deprived of their privilege they deserve as the opportunists grab their rights in the guise of actual warriors. People suffer from poverty, whereas men like Mizan find money flying in the air and up for grabs using illegal methods. Freedom fighters do not want to accept unlawful means of income, but the social environment compels them to do so while feeling guilty of their wrongdoings. The cinema shows how the freedom fighters derailed from their paths. However, in every case, the cinema upholds the dignity of the freedom fighters who made the independence of the country possible. The director portrays them as the most praiseworthy humans. The group of seven freedom fighter friends are named after valuable jewels. Shona (gold), Hira (diamond), Manik (ruby), Kanchan (a Bengali synonym of gold), Ratan (jewel), Chuni (a Bengali synonym of ruby) and Panna (emerald) all these names imply that the freedom fighters are the real gems among all the people. This sentiment is reflected in Neela, the only daughter of a wealthy family, who loves Manik, a freedom fighter from a low-income family. Whereas the higher class people neglect the underprivileged freedom fighters, Neela realizes how precious they are. As if to prove the phrase that only a diamond can measure the worth of another one, she sings a song in the college function in praise of the freedom

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fighters and continues her relationship with Manik till the end. Therefore, her name reflects her character as ‘Neela’ means sapphire. Likewise, the principal always holds high hopes for his freedom fighter students. When he goes to the police station to withdraw the complaint Mizan made against his students, the principal tells the police officers that they may think that his students are criminals, but to him the students are stars detached from orbit. He says that they have lost their paths and are now wandering; and this is why they are burning till they crumble. Hence, the principal accepts that his students are walking the wrong path, but at the same time, he is aware of the reasons behind their downfall. Third Cinema must address the issues which will help to ensure the elimination of exploitation in the long run. Abar Tora Manush Ho portrays problems, reveals the reasons behind the problems, and in the end, establishes emotional attachment and sacrifice of personal happiness for the greater good as the solution to the problems. In the whole cinema, only the principal understands the freedom fighters and their sufferings. He was the person who had inspired them to join the Liberation War, and he is also the person who asks them to join the college again after having surrendered their weapons. When he learns that his son Mizan had tricked Kanchan’s sister, resulting in her suicide—over which Kanchan killed Mizan, the principal makes a false confession as the murderer of Mizan to the police. He does this to save Kanchan. He makes the fighters surrender their weapons and asks them to come into the light, leaving their dark and unbefitting work. For him, his sacrifice is to make way for them to be better people; who are, in his words, his dream people. This may seem like a very dramatic, unrealistic solution to the problems because the freedom fighters are only involved in smallscale crimes to survive. They are just the victims of the situation. The real culprits are still in power and continuing to exploit people for money. Mizan is killed by Kanchan, but he is just a representative of

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the exploiters. Killing some of the culprits would not ensure social emancipation in the long run.

The principal and his freedom fighter students

Moreover, the cinema does not show what happens to Afaz Uddin, who is involved in illegal businesses and is the representative of the exploiters; no resolution is offered relating to the people who are roaming around pretending to be freedom fighters and creating anarchy in the society and there is no indication as to what happens to the people who are involved in smuggling goods and creating artificial crises for personal gain. The principal sacrifices himself for the freedom fighters as he wishes for them to be good human beings. But society remains the same. Exploiters remain active in the society. Shona’s father is sick, and Shona is still not able to earn a living, Hira still does not have any place to live, Manik remains unemployed, and until the end, he is unable to buy a dress for his mother as there is no solution given in the cinema to remedy the excessive price hike in the market. At the end of the cinema, the freedom fighters surrender their arms,

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responding to the call of the principal. The cinema ends, but if Shona and Hira go back to their families, they will be treated the same as before, Chuni and Panna will still find members of the 16th division roaming around the city and the general people will still be in distress. The cinema does not lead to a proper solution, but it seems that providing solutions to all problems was not the intention of the cinema either; because there were no direct solutions for these. Instead, the cinema suggests a way out. At the beginning of the cinema, finding the freedom fighters working against social injustices, Neela asks Manik, what their actions mean and how these actions can help stop all criminal activities. Despairing, Manik answers that they had fought the war of independence with a dream of gaining an enlightened country, where, in his words, ‘people will become more humane’. But the vision had not come true. Later, when the principal asks the freedom fighters to join the college once again, he clarifies that hundreds of years of poverty and deprivation had gradually contaminated the thought process of the people of the nation. They need time to come out of the effects of colonial oppression. The principal taking the liability of Mizan’s murder shows the audience a way out to the highlighted problems. By doing this, the principal gives the students a chance to get back on the right track. Besides, he makes a precedent of sacrifice for people of the society. This seems to be an open call to the people for developing a mentality of sacrifice, an outlook of change for the establishment of a new society. As the name of the cinema Abar Tora Manush Ho means ‘be human again’, from this viewpoint, it seems that this is a call towards the people of the society to sacrifice their selfcenteredness in thought and action for the establishment of an exploitation-free society. With his sacrifice, the principal shows the path towards the long process of achieving true human emancipation. According to Wayne (2001), Third Cinema needs to register “the significance of class difference within the liberation struggle” (p. 21). The cinema is set in a context where the country has achieved independence,

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but human emancipation is still not ensured. The conflict between Afaz Uddin and Manik is nothing but conflict between the classes. Although Manik is a freedom fighter, Afaz Uddin does not want his daughter Neela to marry Manik just because of Manik’s poverty. Although it is a very common conflict portrayed in almost all traditional films, in Abar Tora Manush Ho, it holds a considerable significance. It shows the audience how the rights of one economic class are taken away by another class. Afaz Uddin does not want Neela to marry Manik, but he wants her to marry Mizan, who is a corrupt businessman, and enjoys the privileges of freedom fighters using a false freedom fighter certificate. But Manik, a real freedom fighter, is deprived of the same privileges as he is honest. In Neela’s house, when her father forbids Manik to keep his relationship with Neela, Manik leaves the house without uttering a single word. The high angle shot of Manik walking away from Neela’s house signifies the class difference between Manik and Neela.

Manik leaving Neela’s house

This is emphasized by the question that Afaz Uddin asks to imply that Neela should feel ashamed of having a relationship with a person of the lower-class society when she belongs to the upper-class. Manik

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cannot offer any counter-arguments, but later, he tells Neela in a disheartened voice that he is poor, but his poverty is not his fault. This dialogue embodies a post-war society full of greed and corruption where a freedom fighter feels so helpless that it forces him to walk the wrong path.

Neela looking at Manik leaving her house

Although he is one of the victims of the unstable social condition, Manik is the most patient, level-headed, and ethically concerned character. The continuous humiliation and negligence frustrates his other friends into drinking alcohol; but Manik refuses to join them. When Hira talks about earning their livelihood with the power of their weapons, only Manik opposes him in doing so. Again, his intense reaction helps Hira understand what his mistake was. Moreover, his decision inspires all his friends to appear in the college examination. The director thus initiates a debate between Manik and the others, which works to justify the position of the cinema in that socio-political context. Gabriel (1982) identified ‘the struggle for the emancipation of women’ as a recurring theme of Third Cinema (p. 18). Abar Tora

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Manush Ho frames the struggle of women in two different contexts. Meghla, a member of the lower-class commits suicide after being deceived by Mizan. On the other hand, Neela, a member of the higher-class society, unwillingly accepts her father’s decision for her to marry Mizan. In both cases, they cry for emancipation, but none of them are able to take any steps against the injustices they suffer. The social context at work here leaves them incapable to fight for emancipation. Even so, Neela plays a vital role of supporting and inspiring the freedom fighters. The song she sings in the college function reflects her inner respect and compassion for the freedom fighters. Although she is prohibited by her father, Neela continues her relationship with Manik. Because of her inspiration, Manik agrees to take part in the college examination, which also indirectly motivates his friends to start preparing for the examination.

Cultural Specificity Wayne (2001) understands Third Cinema by its intimacy and familiarity with the culture (p. 22). Third Cinema explores how culture is a site of political struggle. Abar Tora Manush Ho uses cultural products in its journey of seeking ways for human emancipation. At the beginning of the cinema, a sculpture named Aparajeo Bangla (Unvanquished Bengal) is shown, and a song is played in the background. The song addresses the contribution of the freedom fighters in the process of Bangladesh’s liberation. It also addresses the miseries of the freedom fighters which began after the war. It says that the fighters who risked their lives for the freedom of the country are now walking the wrong path and there needs to be a proper way of showing them the right path. Through the song, the cinema not only recognizes a handful of freedom fighters who had lost their hopes and despaired about the newly liberated country but also points towards a very specific group of people who had struggled to liberate the country for a very long time, from before the war. But

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after the liberation, a few people have been indulging in satisfying their own interests, not thinking of all the other people in the country who had waited a long time for social emancipation. When the freedom fighters join the college again, the college arranges a cultural function where Neela sings a song welcoming them. The song says that the country will never be able to repay the debt it owes to the freedom fighters. It might be possible that they would be lost in the course of history and may not be remembered among the so-called great people. But they will always be remembered by the common people of the country and will forever remain alive among them. No matter what, it will never be possible to pay back their contribution. The song upholds the dignity of the freedom fighters. It keeps the hope alive that they will never be lost from the heart of the people. With this, it also refers to the recent situation where freedom fighters are being neglected and dishonoured. In the form of a song, the director thus criticizes the status quo, the existing system where justice has not been established yet, exploitation is still rampant and real emancipation has not been not achieved. The seven friends have a place that acts as a sort of sanctuary— here they pass their leisure, have necessary discussions and rest. This place is indoors and seems to be in an abandoned building. Several paintings are seen hanging on the wall. In one of the paintings, an ancient soldier is holding a cup with flames blazing on it. This painting is shown at different points of the cinema in the background of the characters. This is a symbolic representation of the mental state of the freedom fighters who are internally burning while they observe social injustices. Whenever one of them seems to be unstable or furious, this painting is seen in the background. When the principal expels Manik from the examination, all the other six friends also leave the examination hall and head to their base.

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Furious Ratan

In that room, in a discussion, Panna says that everyone is sprinkling salt on their wounds, but they would have realized their struggle if they had faced the situations that the freedom fighters are going through. Chuni asks if they want to do something or just burn inside. With anguish, Ratan calls to ignite a fire. He had been sitting in a chair. When he stands up while saying the dialogue, the camera tilts up, and a part of the painting becomes visible where the cup of fire and the hand of the soldier is seen.

A cup of fire in the hand of the soldier, behind furious Ratan

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This frame symbolically expresses the agony and inner pain of the soldiers. Again, when Shona breaks the radio set in anger after listening to the announcement to surrender arms, this painting becomes visible in his background once more.

The soldier with fire, behind angry Shona Listening to the announcement asking people to surrender their weapons, Ratan fires his gun over the radio. Chuni jumps towards Ratan to stop him. Ratan stops firing, and furiously comes towards the camera. Behind them, another painting is seen hanging from the wall, where two ancient soldiers are seen to be in an aggressive mood with their spears pointed. Right in front of the painting, Ratan stands with his gun in his hands, angrily expressing his notion about the anarchic condition of the society, arguing that this is not the right time to surrender arms. The soldiers in the painting work here to emphasize Ratan’s viewpoint.

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Furious Ratan and Panna (foreground), two soldiers in action in a painting (in the background)

A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore hangs in the office of the college principal. In his room, the principal motivates the freedom fighters to be better people, encourages them to walk on the right path. The work of Rabindranath Tagore has enriched Bengali culture in various ways. His literary works are sources of cultural motivation for the people of Bangladesh. His song Amar Shonar Bangla, Ami Tomay Bhalobashi, is the national anthem of Bangladesh. In the pre-liberation period, when Bangladesh was under the rule of Pakistan, the then government had banned the transmission of Tagore’s songs on Pakistan Radio (Halim, p. 153). The people of Bengal stood against the government’s decision of banning Tagore’s works in the country (Halim, p. 153). Through this event a sense of nationalism had been raised based on language and culture among the people of this area (Mitra, 2004, p. 118). The portrait of Tagore thus alludes to the cultural struggle of the people that the country had gone through—and works as a source of motivation.

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Portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, hanging behind the principal

Moreover, when the principal sacrifices himself for the greater good of the society and surrenders to the police as the murderer of Mizan, his wife moans in grief. Watching her cry, he consoles her by saying that, if she feels sorry for him, she should call into mind the words of Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Dukkhero timire jodi jole tobo mongol alok, tobe tai huk’, which means, ‘if in the darkness of gloom, the light of your welfare is set alight, so be it’. This verse is part of a song of Tagore. The cinema ends with this song playing in the background. Thus, the cinema uses a song of the great poet to emphasize the importance of developing a sacrificial mentality for the greater good, which will be essential to establish an exploitation-free society. Furthermore, the principal’s office room houses another portrait of an important cultural personality: a picture of the National poet of Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam also hangs on the wall. Kazi Nazrul Islam is known as the rebel poet for the strong stance he took against the British colonial oppression through his poems. This is also indicative of the cinema’s stance against injustice.

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Portrait of rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam behind the freedom fighters

With Neela’s motivation, Manik starts preparing for the college examination. One day, Neela visits Manik’s house while he is studying about the life and career of Dinabandhu Mitra, a famous Bengali dramatist. Manik was trying to recall the publishing year of Mitra’s most notable play Nil Darpan. Nil Darpan or The Indigo Planting Mirror was published in 1960 in Dhaka. This play is a satire on the indigo plantation system under British rule in India that portrayed the effect of the system on a ryot (peasant) family (Oddie, 2013, p. 118). Under the rule of the East India Company, British planters used to force peasants to cultivate indigo on their lands. They would provide small loans as Dadon (an advance). (Chattopadhyay & Mamoon, 2009, p. 1712). This loan was a trap set by the planters as the farmers would never be able to repay the loans as they were cheated by the planters and could make no profit (Chattopadhyay & Mamoon, p. 1712). As a result of the continuous oppression, the peasants started a non-violent revolt in 1859 by refusing to grow indigo any longer (Bhattacharya, 1977, p. 14). In a broader context, the play portrayed the effect of the system created by the British indigo planters on the helpless peasants who were forcefully pressured into cultivate indigo instead of food crops. All who

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supported the indigo system were mocked, and the then newspaper editors, magistrates, indigo planters, and factory servants were severely criticized by the play for exercising or supporting corruption and tyranny (Oddie, 2013, p. 118). The play worked to portray the real picture of the peasants under the cruel planters. Later on, the play contributed to putting an end to the oppressions of the indigo planters, which the government had enforced by creating the Indigo Act in 1862. The peasants of that time were not able to cultivate crops according to their own will in their own lands. Similarly, freedom fighters, who struggled the most for the independence of Bangladesh, were facing difficulties in the post-independence situation, whereas some pretenders were enjoying the benefits. By introducing the play Nil Darpan in Abar Tora Manush Ho, the director emphasizes this fact and reminds the audience about the cultural intervention that took place during the political struggle of the nineteenth century. After the freedom fighters become involved in illegal lines of work to earn money, one night, Shona, Hira, and Chuni stand in front of the Central Martyr Monument and feel remorse due to their inability to remain honest.

Shona at the Shaheed Minar

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According to Wayne (2001), Third Cinema explores culture as a site of political struggle (p. 22). The martyrs’ monument refers to the history of cultural struggle the nation went through, and by connecting this site with the plot, the cinema attempts to preserve the national culture, reminding the audience about the nation’s past struggle. Again, when Ratan and Panna go to a Jalsha for entertainment, Panna gets angry when he hears a foreign language (Urdu/Hindi) song being sung. He asks the singer to sing a Bengali song.

Panna asking the singer to sing a Bengali song

The freedom fighters were compelled to leave the right path, but their hearts are in the right place. Even when he was in a distasteful environment, Panna asks for a song in his mother tongue. Thus, with this sequence, the cinema exposes its intimacy with national culture. The cinema also uses poetry as a cultural reference in the struggle of social emancipation. When the freedom fighters have a discussion on not surrendering their weapons as their society is not yet free from its enemies, Chuni recites a verse from the famous poem Bidrohi (The Rebel) written by the rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. He recites the line ‘Ami shei din hobo shanto, jobe uthpiriter krondon rol akashe batashe dhonibe na’ which means, ‘I shall rest in peace only when I

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find the sky and the air free of the piteous groans of the oppressed’. This is a rebellious verse that works to energize the freedom fighters in their vision of establishing an exploitation-free society.

Chuni reciting from the poem Bidrohi (The Rebel)

Formal Issues

Abar Tora Manush Ho does employ political content to instigate the audience, but in case of the form it is presented in, it does not seem very innovative in style. Solanas and Getino (1970) emphasized the discovery of a filmmaker’s language in case of making Third Cinema (p. 6), and according to Espinosa (1997), Third Cinema language must be an alternative to the traditional cinema (p. 82). Abar Tora Manush Ho cannot be said to be formally innovative, but it can be marked by the big differences it has when compared to traditional cinema. Traditional Bangladeshi cinema mostly aims at the mere entertainment of the audience. However, Abar Tora Manush Ho does not provide mere entertainment; instead, it works as a thoughtprovoking cinema that aims at revealing the real condition of the people in the society and the reasons behind their state. The storyline

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of the cinema is quite different from traditional Bangladeshi cinema. Instead of building the narrative based on just the crisis that occurs in the romantic relationship of the hero and the heroine, Abar Tora Manush Ho focuses on portraying the socio-political problems in the post-independence society. Traditional cinema uses mere entertainment-based romantic songs, but this cinema refuses to do that. It includes four full songs where two songs address the contribution and current condition of freedom fighters. The first song starts with the opening credit lines. It foreshadows the theme of the cinema. But it does not employ traditional musical instruments; rather, the voice of the singer becomes most prominent. The song at the very beginning of the cinema creates a serious mood and thus prepares the audience for a serious cinema with social and political content. The second song makes use of strong political content. Neela sings the song to welcome the freedom fighters to the college. But it makes severe criticism of the existing status quo where freedom fighters are underprivileged. The third song is a romantic one, but even so, it is different from traditional romantic songs. It does not emphasize physical movements and sexualizing the female character but centers on the couple’s innocuous relationship goals. The fourth song is sung by a singer in the Jalsha. In case of these scenes in traditional cinema, crass songs are introduced for cheap entertainment, but in this cinema, the singer sings a thoughtprovoking song. With the lyrics, the singer seems to describe the nature of ever-flowing time as well as life. The traditional cinema also emphasizes on introducing sexual and violent content to provide the audience with visual and psychological pleasure. But Abar Tora Manush Ho makes use of such content in a different manner. It uses sexual and violent content to make the audience more aware of exploitation and encourages them to take a stance against it. Mizan initiates a physical relationship with Meghla; the cinema does not show the scene of intercourse in an explicit manner. It is barely hinted at by making use of Meghla’s dialogue. After that, the cinema cuts

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to Mizan’s home, where his father comes to know about his illegal business. Thus, the audience does not enjoy the scene in a voyeuristic way, but rather, they are worried about Meghla and angry with Mizan as the scene indicates Mizan’s deception. Most of the time, the freedom fighters are shown to be walking with their weapons; they also beat illegal traders. However, the cinema does not represent all these in a traditional heroic light; rather it highlights these in a realistic way that does not provide the audience with mere ‘action-movie like’ entertainment. The cinema is also different in its representation of women. It does not emphasize entertaining the audience by presenting female characters in unrealistic ways to please the male gaze. Notably, the central female character Neela is given limited focus as was appropriate for the character she played. She is portrayed as a supporting character rather than a central one, which is required by the plot itself. This is quite different from the other traditional Bangladeshi cinema of the time because the actress Babita, who had played the role of Neela was a very prominent actress at that time. In the other films she appeared in, she was presented with a flair of glamour, with a particular focus on her as a selling point of the movies.

Babita as Neela

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However, in this cinema, she is portrayed very simply, to represent ‘a real woman’, not a glamourous, fictionalized one. This is an exception to the trends of traditional cinema. Meghla is portrayed simply as well. Even the singer and the dancer of the Jalsha scene are given only the focus that the plot requires them to have. In traditional cinema, dancers and singers in similar scenes would have been portrayed in an alluring and striking manner to appeal to the audience and offer them crass viewing pleasure. In this movie, on the other hand, they are humanized. When the singer tells Panna that they are also a part of the hardworking common people, the cinema situates them in the same row as the deprived common people who are just trying to get by. In addition, the cinema does not impose any unrealistic heroic appearances on any of the characters, which is also different from traditional cinema. Freedom fighters themselves are the real heroes, who later became deprived in the post-independence society. But still, no miracle takes place to magically solve everything. Traditional cinema usually introduces a character with extraordinary powers who can solve all the problems and provide a happy ending. But this cinema has no one like that, and that is why the ending was also different. The cinema initiates a tragic end, leaving the characters in an unstable socio-political condition, urging the audience to take a stance for actual emancipation. Gabriel (1982) finds emphasis on collective characters than the central one as one of the styles used by Third Cinema (pp. 24-33). Abar Tora Manush Ho is a cinema that does not solely emphasize on a single character. Though Manik is given more importance in certain circumstances in the film, it does not depend on a single character. Every character in the cinema plays a vital role.

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Still picture in the cinema

Again, the cinema uses some still pictures which are stylistically different from traditional cinema. When Neela sings a song in the college program, a number of still pictures are used to represent the meaning of the song more vividly.

Still picture in the cinema

The stills represent the general populace including the farmers working in the fields, the fishermen fishing in the river and so on. These

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are the people who will, the song says, always remember the freedom fighters. The people enjoying higher positions in the social hierarchy are portrayed by the stills of multistoried buildings, and by showing higher-class people attending a party. The song says that these are the people who may forget the contributions of the freedom fighters. The cinema uses two flashback scenes in its narrative. In one scene, it shows how Pakistani soldiers killed Meghla and Kanchan’s parents and how Meghla survived hiding in the graveyard of her grandparents. This scene establishes how the freedom fighters lost their families because they had joined the Liberation War. Again, when the freedom fighters start walking the wrong path, one day, while taking rest in a hospital bed, the principal remembers the day when all his seven freedom fighter students came back after winning the war. He remembers that, that day he had assured them that even if they lose everything, he will be there for them. This makes him support them again, even after they had started doing things that were wrong. After this, he asks them to come back to the right path and requests the police to drop all charges against them.

Pakistani soldiers attempt to kill Kanchan’s father

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Abar Tora Manush Ho is also different from traditional films in its use of background music. The composer used leitmotifs (a dominant recurring theme) to build a sense of continuity or to provide the audience with a detailed message or to create a specific mood. Whenever Mizan and Meghla are shown together, a piece of music plays in the background to induce the feeling of subtle tension. From the beginning of their relationship up until the betrayal of Mizan, the same music is heard again and again. Even in the romantic scenes, the music does not change. It seems that this music is used consciously to make the audience pick up on Mizan’s evil intentions from the very beginning. Again, whenever the freedom fighters are shown in a mood of action, action music is played in the background. In addition, background music is used very precisely in the scenes. Most of the scenes employ natural sounds, which is also not very traditional in Bangladeshi cinema. The cinema seems to offer an open ground for discussion, debate and argument about the unstable status quo, which aims to mark a clear difference between good and evil in the hazy context of the post-independence period. This kind of invitation to open discussion was not very frequent in cinema in that period. By doing so, the cinema also marks a difference between itself and traditional Bangladeshi cinema and sets itself apart. In its portrayal of social unrest, on the one hand, it directly shows some events, and on the other hand, it uses indirect reference. The name of an employee in the Bangabani College is ‘Shomoy’, which means—time. In most of his appearances, shown to enter any scene of the film, he says, ‘The times are bad/hard, sir’. The way he talks may seem a little comical, but his repetition of the dialogue gives the audience a subtle message about the context.

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Most Third Cinema theorists emphasized initiating new aesthetic styles which work to raise consciousness among the audience. Although Abar Tora Manush Ho marks a noteworthy difference to traditional mainstream Bangladeshi cinema, it still seems weak in the area of formal innovation. According to Brecht, the spectator should be prevented from making an identification and having an empathy with the character and situation (Kellner, 2020, p. 32). He used the “direct addresses of the audience” technique to break the fourth wall in the theatre (Davis, 2015, pp. 86-87). The audience, thus, would be able to become a participant than a mere spectator and this process worked to increase their political involvement in the existing status quo.

Abar Tora Manush Ho asks the audience to stand against the social exploitation through its content but it does not employ much intensive, formally innovative styles. The employed forms in the film situates the audience in the position that is more of an observer than an active participant. But it certainly attempted to serve political purposes through the transformation of traditional cinema devices. Wayne (2001) states that Third Cinema concentrates on transforming the cinematic language of the dominant cinema, rather than rejecting it (p. 10). Solanas and Getino assert that the revolutionary act in the film is not defined by the form utilized in the cinema but the transformative role the cinema takes in a strategy of liberation to reach in a specific circumstance (as cited in Buchsbaum, 2001, p. 160).

Abar Tora Manush Ho may not introduce new cinematic codes, new formal styles, but it uses traditional formal tools in a way that makes the cinema stand aside from traditional cinema. Thus the cinema overcomes the barrier of the formal condition of traditional cinema.

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In a way, it has transformed the traditional cinema language in a strategic way, to make its stance against exploitation clearer.

Distribution/Exhibition th

Abar Tora Manush Ho was released on 16 December, 1973, but before its release, the cinema faced difficulties in procuring the censor certificate (R. I. Asad, personal communication, May 12, 2020) for its explicit political content. The censor board had permitted the cinema to be released on the condition that some of its scenes are deleted. A number of still pictures had been used in the cinema. According to Raisul Islam Asad, who had played the role of Shona in the cinema, the film had some footage in the places where those still pictures were taken, which the censor board ordered them to delete. According to Faruk, another actor of the cinema who played the role of Kanchan, the cinema created a debate at the time of its release, and later a freedom fighter Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya reviewed the cinema and permitted it to be released (The Daily Inqilab, October 20, 2017). Thus the cinema faced trouble for having strong political content and advocating severe criticism of the existing status quo at the time of its release. With the thematic and formal investigation of the cinema, it becomes evident that Abar Tora Manush Ho was a conscious political attempt in reaction to the post-independence socio-political context of Bangladesh. It makes use of specific historical references with its employment of political content, which works to raise social and political consciousness among the audience and provokes the audience to react against the status quo. In doing so, it justifies its stance against exploitation and involves cultural references to put emphasis on our national culture. It uses formal tools of traditional cinema in a unique way to overcome the formal barriers of

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traditional cinema and raise political consciousness among the audience. Thus, Abar Tora Manush Ho works as a strong language of protest against the social and political exploitation in the post-war era, and to do this, the cinema itself becomes informed with the Third Cinema aesthetics in its way of transforming traditional cinema techniques.

Chapter Four

Rupali Shoikotey (1979): An Allegorical Protest against Political Suppression Rupali Shoikotey (The Loner, 1979) is a unique attempt to indicate the political problems and challenge the status quo of the time it was made. It is set in the context of the pre-Liberation War of Bangladesh and it subtly deals with the post-independence situation of the country. The cinema depicts a number of incidents occurring between 1966 to 1970, which was a significant time in the political history of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was then known as East Pakistan, and the people of the country were struggling for their rights under the authoritarian military rule of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. Rupali Shoikotey deals with the problems people were facing at that time, such as: unstable social and political conditions, public security issues, the restriction on freedom of expression, the ban on political parties, weakness of the left-wing political parties, compromising nature of the intellectuals, etc. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the people of the country expected a better life, but the instability in the social and political formation did not simply go away. Between the years of 1971 to 1975, the country witnessed the weakness of leadership and lack of foresight in the administration, which led to the military coup of 1975 where the president of the country, father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed, and later, the power was taken over by the military force. In the fourth year of independence, the country went under an authoritarian military rule once again. The only difference between the rulers was that the previous ones were of West Pakistan, and the newer ones originated from the independent country itself. Different socio-political problems of the two periods were more or less the same. It is always a threat for filmmakers to stand against the existing administration and raise questions against the existing status quo. In a

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society where freedom of expression is a far cry, this becomes even more difficult. Hence, the setting of the film has been disguised as that of the pre-independence period and Alamgir Kabir, through his film Rupali Shoikotey, has stated his political thoughts and raised his voice against the status quo of that critical socio-political condition of the postindependence situation as well. For this reason, it is essential to discuss the socio-political context of the cinema, which accounts for the facts and events of the period beginning in 1947 and ending in 1979.

Socio-political Context In 1947, British India was divided based on religion into two countries, India and Pakistan; and present-day Bangladesh, was named East Pakistan as a province of Pakistan (Monjur, 2004, p. 21). Although the people of East Pakistan played vital roles in establishing the state of Pakistan, except for the religion of the majority, East Pakistan had nothing in common with Pakistan (Monjur, p. 21). The culture and lifestyle of the people of East Pakistan were completely different from that of the people of Pakistan (Monjur, p. 21). Although the Bengalis were 56% of the total population of Pakistan, they were ruled by Pakistanis who never strived to facilitate the progress of the province (Monjur, p. 22). The people of East Pakistan were economically, politically and culturally dominated by the then rulers (Monjur, pp. 22-25). When people became aware of this discrimination, they became conscious. They protested openly for the first time when they were deprived of using their own mother language as the state language. The rulers decided to make Urdu the only state language of Pakistan whereas Urdu speakers consisted of only 7.2% of the entire populace, and Bengali speakers were 54.6% of the country’s population (Monjur, 2004, p. 36). The people of East Pakistan did not accept

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this and mass dissatisfaction transformed into a movement which is now known as the Bengali Language Movement. Student protestors played the most important role in the movement. On 21st February of 1952, they called for a strike, defying the section 144 issued by the government. It was on this day that the police opened fire on a mass procession; three students were killed (Umor, 1993, p. 459) and many more were injured and arrested (Monjur, 2004, p. 45). Another five were killed, and more than 50 were injured the next day (Umor, p. 461). On 23rd February, a martyrs’ monument was built in front of the Dhaka Medical College hostel where the first student was killed, but the police demolished it on the 26th (Umor, p. 463). In the following days, the situation got out of control and at last the government recognized Bengali as one of the state languages in 1956 (Monjur, 2004, p. 45). In the first decade of its existence as an independent country, the Pakistani government tried to create a constitution for the nation. But in every step, the fundamental rights of the people of East Pakistan were undermined (Monjur, 2004, pp. 46-51). The language movement brought upon the idea of a secular, democratic and language-based nationalism and the discriminations revealed by the steps of the governments in the following years made people demand the autonomy of the province (Monjur, p. 46). On the 7th of October, 1958, President Iskander Mirza abolished the constitution and the parliaments and issued the martial law in Pakistan. He appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA), who assumed the power on the 27th of October and declared himself the President of Pakistan (Mitra, 2004, pp. 90-91). He banned all political parties and all kinds of political activities in the country (Mitra, p. 92). In 1959, he took the rank Field Marshal and declared the establishment of a new system named Basic Democracy (Mitra, p. 93). It was designed to establish a system under

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Mohammad Ali described as “Government of the President, by the the centralized control of the president, which Chowdhury President, for the President” (Mitra, pp. 94-95). Up until 1962, the government remained under the martial law. It was finally replaced by the new constitution initiating the so-called Basic Democracy on 8th June, 1962 (Mitra, p. 96). People in East Pakistan, especially students, always opposed the injustices of the government with bold stances. Towards the beginning and end of 1962, the student movement heavily protested against the Ayub government on the issues of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s arrest and the education commission report (Mitra, pp. 97, 101). A government-supported student organization, National Students Federation (NSF) was established, which was actually a government-supported terrorist organization that worked against the progressive student movement (Mitra, p. 104). Freedom of expression was a far cry at the time. Bans on newspapers were becoming more strict day by day (Mitra, pp. 98, 105, 109, 137). East Pakistan was dominated by West Pakistan in every sector. East Pakistan earned most of the foreign exchange for Pakistan, but the bigger share was used for the development of West Pakistan (Mitra, 2004, p. 122). The development cost for East Pakistan was less than one-fourth of West Pakistan’s (Mitra, p. 121). More than half of the total revenue was expended in the defence sector, but at the time of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, East Pakistan borders were entirely unprotected (Mitra, pp. 120, 131-132). All these drove Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leading politician of that time, to initiate a six-point demand. The six points included demands for a constitution for the federation of Pakistan, with only defence and foreign affairs remaining under the federal government, two separate currencies for the two wings of the country, with the power of taxation and revenue collection given to the provincial governments, different reserves for foreign exchange earnings of the two parts and paramilitary force for East Pakistan (Mitra, p. 134). Soon, the demands became popular, and the government arrested Sheikh

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Mujib in 1966. Two years later, in 1968, the government filed a sedition case against him and a number of other people—the ‘State vs. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Others’ case, is now popularly known as the Agartala Conspiracy Case (Halim, 2004, pp. 154-155). With the demand of the six points, the demand of the eleven points issued by the students, and the demand for the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other political prisoners—a mass uprising began in 1968 and reached its peak in 1969 (Halim, p. 163). In the face of the people’s severe protests against the oppression, the Ayub government withdrew the charges against the prisoners (Halim, p. 176). Ayub Khan transferred his power to General Yahya Khan and Yahya Khan reinstated martial law on 25th March of 1969 (Gupta, 2004, p. 181). The cultural movement of these years played a vital role in the course of Bangladesh’s liberation. In the post-1947 era, these cultural movements began with the East Pakistan Literary Conference in Dhaka, held in December 1948 (Monjur, 2004, p. 79). Later, the Dhaka University based ‘Cultural Society’ was established in 1951, and ‘Pakistan Literary Society’ was established in 1952,. These played significant roles against the fanatic, reactionary activities of the Muslim League (Monjur, p. 78). Literary conferences were held in different regions, such as Chittagong, Comilla and Dhaka in the years of 1951 to 1954 and the Cultural Conference at Kagmari was held in 1957. All these worked to raise national consciousness and spread the concept of Bengali Nationalism (Monjur, p. 79). The rulers of Pakistan had taken different measures to suppress the Bengalis culturally. The first measure was the attempt to establish Urdu as the state language. After the Language Movement, it became a part of Bengali culture to pay tribute to the martyrs of the movement at the martyrs’ monument every year on 21st February. Later, in the regime of Ayub Khan, the government tried to reform the Bengali language. They proposed for a standard roman script for both Urdu and Bengali, which was highly opposed by the Bengalis (Mitra, 2004, p.

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115) The proposal to use the Arabic script for Bengali was also opposed by the people (Halim, 2004, p. 152). From 1962 onwards, a cultural organization, Chhayanaut started celebrating a number of cultural programs on days such as the Bengali new year, the birth anniversary of famous poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore, seasonal festivals etc. (Mitra, 2004, p. 117). 22nd to 28th September, 1963 was celebrated as the Bengali Language and Literature Week and Pahela Baishakh, the first day of the Bengali new year started being celebrated annually as a national festival from 1964 onwards (Mitra, pp. 117-118). The vibrant works of Rabindranath Tagore were a very significant part of Bengali culture back then, and they still are at present. However, the Pakistan government saw Tagore as an Indian Bengali Hindu poet. The government was opposed to the celebration of Tagore’s birth centenary in 1961 (Halim, 2004, p. 153). Later in 1967, the government also imposed a ban on broadcasting the songs of Tagore on Pakistan Radio (Halim, p. 153). Different organizations such as the cultural organization Srijoni, the literary organization Apurba Sangsad, the artist group Kranti and the Chhayanaut Music School severely protested this decision (Halim, p. 153). All of these situations worked to create a nationalism based on language and culture among the people of this region (Mitra, 2004, p. 118). Awami League, led by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won the general election of 1970 but the military government delayed the transfer of power to the elected party (Gupta, 2004, pp. 197-205). On the 1st March of 1971, the session of the national assembly was declared to be cancelled (Sarker, 2004, p. 206). In protest, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman initiated the non-cooperation movement, and in his historical speech of 7th March, he asked all the people to be prepared for the struggle of liberation (Sarker, p. 207). The Liberation War of Bangladesh started when the Pakistan military suddenly attacked the civilians of the country on the night

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of 25th March (Sarker, p. 236). The country was liberated on 16th December, 1971 with the surrender of General A A K Niazi along with 93 thousand Pakistani soldiers (Sarker, p. 265). After liberation, the Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman formed the parliamentary democratic government, in accordance to the result of the general election of 1970 (Ahmad M. , 2020, pp. 21-22). On 16th December, 1972, the constitution of Bangladesh came into effect. Its four principles were democracy, socialism, nationalism and secularism (Ahmed A. M., 2013, p. 619). In the fourth year of liberation, martial law was again imposed on the country after a military coup on the 15th of August, 1975 (Rahman, 2013, p. 41). A new country, liberated from the military rule of Pakistan, went under military rule once more. On the 6th of November, 1975, Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem was instated as the 5th president of Bangladesh, and on the next day, he became the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) (Rahman, p. 42). Army chief Major General Ziaur Rahman was the Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator (Mascarenhas, 2019, p. 145). However, Ziaur Rahman was the person who controlled the administration from the shadows (Ahmad M. , 2016, p. 81). Later, he took over the power from the president on 29th November, 1976 (Ahmad M. , p. 88). Ahmad (2016) compared this event with the event of 27th October, 1958 when General Ayub Khan replaced Iskander Mirza as the president of Pakistan (p. 88). During his ruling period, the governing system went through different changes, and even though democracy was established, it was nothing but a controlled system to justify his autocracy. He made president Abu Sayem suspend the promised election, which was to be held in February 1977 (Mascarenhas, 2019, p. 155). Ziaur Rahman won in the presidential election of 1978 though he was not legally eligible to be a presidential candidate (Mascarenhas, 2019, pp. 158-159). He

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established a political party named Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 1978 (Ahmad M. , 2016, p. 121) and lifted the martial law on 6th February 1979 (Ahmad M. , p. 81) to go through with the national parliamentary election. BNP won the election of 18th February (Ahmad M. , p. 138). Though a democratic government was established, the system was weak under the autocratic position of Ziaur Rahman as he was head of both the government and the state and most of the people in the administration were from military backgrounds (Ahmad M. , pp. 143-144). According to Mushtaq Ahmed, Ziaur Rahman had constitutionalized his dictatorship to gain the support of the people (Mascarenhas, 2019, p. 160). This can be compared with the preindependence situation of the country under the rule of Ayub Khan. In the regime of Ziaur Rahman, social disorder went on to peak. Law and order deteriorated as criminal offences like robbery, political murder, violence against women increased like never before (Mascarenhas, 2019, pp. 164-165). Mascarenhas (2019) blames the unstable economy caused by excessive corruption in every sphere of the country for this situation (pp. 160-164). The Failng economy mostly depended on foreign aid, but according to Marcus Franda, control of resources went to a newly rich class which created an inconsistent economic situation between the rural and urban areas (Mascarenhas, p. 164). Freedom of expression was also a far cry at the time. People were asked to express their thoughts freely, but this was just for show. In 1978, The president created an open space in Dhaka named ‘Muktangan’ for the people, where everyone was invited to express their notions, but it was under the surveillance of the detectives, and no one had the courage to talk openly (Mascarenhas, p. 162). Ziaur Rahman’s autocratic regime lasted until 1981 when he was killed by a group of army officers in Chittagong on 30th May (Rahman, 2013, p. 58).

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Poster: Rupali Shoikotey

Rupali Shoikotey: Storyline A title card at the beginning of the cinema lets us know that the events of the film reflect the restless period between 1966 and 1970. The story of the film develops with the journey of a journalist named Lenin Chowdhury. He is first introduced as the feature editor of a newspaper ‘Daily News’ and also as a freelance journalist who works for different national and international newspapers. A young woman named Ana and her widowed mother live in a cottage at Inani Sea Beach which is situated at the south of Cox’s Bazar. The cottage was bought seven years ago by the widow’s late husband, Manuel Arthis, who was a Dhaka University Professor. In their cottage, there is a oneroom rest house which they rent to the tourists. Lenin goes there to write a feature on the coral reefs and starts staying in the rest house. Ana seems reserved in nature and does not feel comfortable enough to talk with Lenin.

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When Lenin leaves the cottage, another man, named Anwar, goes to stay there. Anwar finds that he knows the family that manages the rest house, as he was a student of Professor Manuel Arthis twelve years ago, when he was a student at the University of Dhaka. At this point, the audience learns the reason behind the reserved nature of Ana. Her father, the Professor, was killed by hoodlums while he was trying to protect her wife and daughter. Ever since then, Ana hates all men and stays away from them. Anwar shows his empathy for the family and lets Ana know that he was a participant of the movement for Palestine’s liberation, which is where he fell in love with Laila, one of the members of the Guerilla unit he was involved in. But one morning, she was suddenly killed by assassins and Anwar was blamed guilty for her death. Gradually, in different scenes, Anwar and Ana are shown discussing different topics with each other at different times. This leads them to become close to each other, which in turn, leads Anwar to propose marriage to Ana. Ana tells Anwar that she needs time to make a decision. Anwar goes back to his work, saying that he will try to come back soon. On the other side, in Dhaka, Lenin resigns his job at the Daily News as he was compelled to stop writing in defense of the rights of the people by criticizing the administration. Returning home, Lenin finds Sharmin waiting for him. As Sharmin is in love with Lenin, she asks him to meet her father and talk about their marriage. Lenin meets Sharmin’s father, a capitalist who owns a number of private properties. He wants to allure Lenin to marry Sharmin with his property and says that he wants to see his daughter happy. Lenin, a journalist who has nothing but his ethics, refuses this proposal, and says that he can only accept Sharmin and not her father’s money. Hearing this and observing Lenin’s apathetic nature, Sharmin decides not to marry him. By this time, Lenin has joined Media Front, a

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newspaper where he is given the freedom of writing by its editor Aslam. Lenin seems to be active at his job again. In the meantime, Sharmin also starts working in a filmmaking unit under UNESCO, where she meets her music school classmate Kamal, who is now a film producer. Kamal seems to have loved Sharmin from their school days, and they become closer upon meeting again. Lenin is shown doing his daily job. Once he gets news that Pakistani administrators are trying to stop Zahir Raihan’s cinema Jibon Theke Neya in the production stage, he goes to the Film Development Corporation and records the ‘behind the scenes’ of the cinema. Lenin is shown to be involved in political activities as well. He meets the unit leaders of a political organization, Liberation Front, and discusses the activities and inspires them to be prepared to establish an exploitation-free society. Lenin, his colleague and the editor of the weekly Media Front have a discussion and criticize the mentality of the intellectuals in East Pakistan and their tendency to support the authoritarians. Lenin seems to be a person who has a bold, protesting voice in the articles that he writes. He also observes different repressive measures taken by the government. He takes an interview of Dr. Mahmud, an economics professor of the University of Dhaka, who was attacked by hoodlums because he raised his voice to protect the economic rights of the people of the country. Lenin meets a left-wing political leader in a remote village and also criticizes the passive roles played by the leaders. Lenin refuses to have a relationship with a woman who had flown three thousand miles to Dhaka, just to meet him. The cinema also shows the destruction of the social system and the degradation of the legal administration through the kidnapping incident of the wife of a professor named Mizanur Rahman. The Chief of the Press Informtion Department (PID) warns Lenin about his article

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published in Media Front. This article mentioned a controversial comment by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that was not supposed to be highlighted in media. Lenin is tortured and interrogated because of his active role in politics and his attachment with the East Bengal Liberation Front. But he does not confess anything. He is kept in jail for a while and then released. He instructs his party people to hide for a short period as a strategy to throw off the authorities looking for them. Lenin himself decides to take a temporary leave from the political arena, which is why he goes back to the Inani Sea Beach to rest and work on a detailed write up on the coral reefs for the National Geographic. On the other hand, Sharmin decides to marry Kamal. Reaching Inani, Lenin gets back to the cottage he was in earlier and finds Ana to be a changed person. As the days pass by, Lenin discovers himself in love with Ana, but Ana is waiting for Anwar to return as promised. Suddenly, Sharmin arrives at the rest house to meet her mother, Mrs. Arthis, and Lenin comes to know that Sharmin and Ana are stepsisters. Sharmin leaves, and Ana keeps waiting for Anwar. As time passes, Lenin finds hope for a relationship between him and Ana. However, Anwar suddenly comes back, and Lenin leaves the place. The cinema ends with the scene where Lenin keeps walking onward.

Rupali Shoikotey: The Past as an Allegory for the Present Historicity

Rupali Shoikotey deals with a number of events that took place between 1966 and 1970 in the then East Pakistan (later named to Bangladesh after the Liberation War in 1971). The cinema represents the time when the country was under the military dictatorship of West Pakistan. It was released in 1979, eight years after the country’s liberation. The film was made in a situation where

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the country was free from foreign enemies however, it was still running under military dictatorship. The so-called martial law administration, from which the people achieved emancipation through armed struggle, came back to the country just in the fourth year of the liberation. The cinema does not depict the events of the time it was made in, but it portrays the situation of that time in the guise of the events that took place before the liberation. The cinema uses references from history in various scenes. Lenin always seems to be taking a strong stance against injustice. He always writes against social and political repression. He is not afraid of anyone, even in a critical situation. He works as the assistant editor in a newspaper named Daily News. His editor faces pressure from the higher ups due to Lenin’s honest and subversive write-up. Once, the editor lets him know that his regular article, a post-editorial on the demand for autonomy of East Pakistan, will not be published anymore as higher authorities from the then capital of the country, Rawalpindi, putting pressure on them to discontinue it. After the Indo-Pak War of 1965, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman put out six demands in 1966 (Mitra, 2004, p. 134), known as ‘Our Charter for Survival’, which was in fact centered around demanding greater autonomy for East Pakistan. Lenin disagrees with the editor and says that he cannot stop writing about the issues related to the lives of the people of East Pakistan no matter what pressure comes upon him. He also argues that the newspaper can avoid the pressure as it is not run by the government. But the editor reminds him that the country is under the military rule of Field Marshal Ayub Khan. During Ayub Khan’s regime, newspapers were facing a critical situation due to increasing restrictions (Mitra, pp. 98, 105, 109, 137). Lenin still does not agree as he thinks that a newspaper has no reason to be published if it cannot uphold the rights, hopes and desires of the common people. Finally, Alam, the editor of the newspaper, orders Lenin to stop writing the article without giving Lenin any space to make a counter-

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argument. Here, the submissive nature of the people in higher positions is revealed through the actions of the editor. But it is also highlighted that not all people submit themselves to the authority willingly. As an individual, Alam supports Lenin and used to be a journalist like Lenin. Lenin says that he was inspired to become a journalist after reading Alam’s decisive write-up on the issue of the Mother Language Movement in 1952. But at this point, Alam has no choice but to do what the authority say, as he fears for his family’s safety. Lenin warns Alam and says that if the Pakistani rulers strike someday, they will spare no Bengali people and that it would not matter who is submissive and who is subversive. This seems to be a reference to the brutal war crimes that took place at the time of the Liberation War in 1971. During the war, the Pakistan army, on the orders of the West Pakistani rulers, tortured and killed people indiscriminately, they did not care if the people had worked for them or not. Every person who was an East Pakistani was their target. Again, the reference to the mother language movement reminds the audience about East Pakistan’s history of struggle. Lenin’s reluctance to marry Sharmin due to his uncertain lifestyle has also been linked with the unstable situation of the 1960s in different regions of the globe. This is why Lenin alludes to the critical situations in Algeria, Vietnam and Angola. The Algerian War of Independence began in 1954 with an armed revolution launched by the National Liberation Front (FLN), and in 1962 the country gained independence from France (Hitchens, 2006). Starting in the 1950s, the Vietnam War continued until 1975 (Spector, 2020). Again, the independence war of Angola started in 1961 and ended in 1974 (Thornton & Clarence-Smith, 2020). The director also adds the Palestine Liberation Movement in his process of linking the cinema with the liberation movements around the world. Anwar tells Ana about his relationship with Laila. He had become involved in the Palestine Liberation Movement in 1962. Laila was a member of his

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guerilla group in Lebanon who was later assassinated. While Anwar describes these events, the cinema shows real footage of the liberation movement. Again, when Lenin is shown to be passing his days in the prison, real footage of different movements and mass uprisings is shown, and a revolutionary song plays in the background. The footage shows the movement and mass uprising in Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba and Palestine in the 1960s to relate this to the struggle of the people of East Pakistan. Both the characters of Lenin and Anwar reflect the life and work of the director of the film, especially Lenin. When Lenin was being interrogated in jail, the interrogator claims that Lenin is a trained guerilla member and assumes that he is a leader of anti-Pakistani guerilla training activities taking place in the East Pakistan House in London. Moreover, he talks about Lenin’s visit to Algeria in 1962 and Cuba in 1963. Lenin denies the allegation and explains that the East Pakistan House is a student hostel which is an open place and too improbable to be suspected as a guerilla training centre. Again, Lenin justifies that his visit to Algeria was only to have an interview with Ben Bella. Ahmed Ben Bella was Algeria’s first president who played a vital role in the Algerian War of Independence (Lentz, 2013, p. 25-26). He was one of the nine revolutionary leaders who founded the Algerian Front of National Liberation (FLN) (Lentz, p. 25). FLN, also known as National Liberation Front, directed the Algerian War of Independence against France (Britannica, n.d.). That is why the interrogator suspects Lenin’s visit to Algeria to be a political one. History states that the French army imprisoned Ben Bella from 22 October 1956 to 18 March, 1962 (Lentz, 2013, p. 25). But Lenin went to Algeria on 19 February, 1962, which strengthens his justification. Alamgir Kabir, the director of the cinema, was a student of science and studied mathematics and physics in London (Kabir,

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2018, p. 216). Later he joined the British Communist Party and started journalism as a reporter of the Daily Worker, which was published by the party (Kabir, p. 216). He was involved in the activities of the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria and later in the struggle for Palestine’s liberation (Kabir, p. 216). He met revolutionary activists like Ahmed Ben Bella and Fidel Castro; he was later caught by the French troops and jailed for eight months (Kabir, p. 216). After that, he went back to London, where he and a number of other people established the East Bengal Liberation Front in 1963—with the intention to prepare for the armed struggle against Pakistan and took guerilla training (Kabir, p. 217); later, joined in the East Pakistan House in London (Jibonponji, 2018, p. 308). After coming back to the country, he was imprisoned for three months by the government for being involved in the political activities (Jibonponji, p. 309). His educational background, his experience of working as a journalist, attachment to the struggle of liberation, imprisonment, all of these events are reflected in the cinema through the characters of Lenin and Anwar. The illustration hanging in the office of the weekly Media Front saying ‘SMASH CAPITAL NOW’ with a picture of Ernesto Che Guevara also refers to the historical event of the Cuban Revolution which was a successful armed struggle against the then military dictatorship in Cuba.

Rupali Shoikotey also highlights the importance of cinema in the process of social revolution. It represents the historical events related to the cinema Jibon Theke Neya (1970). The cinema was directed by Zahir Raihan, and the autocratic Pakistan Government had tried to ban it. While working in his office, Lenin receives a phone call from the famous film director Zahir Raihan. Raihan lets Lenin know that the government is trying to ban his recent cinema Jibon Theke Neya in the production stage. Lenin tells Raihan that he will be in the

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shooting spot. He goes to the Film Development Corporation and shoots some behind the scenes footage with a 16mm film camera. The real footage used in this scene shows Zahir Raihan directing the cinema in the shooting location.

Jibon Theke Neya can be considered as the most significant political cinema ever made in the history of Bangladeshi cinema. It was made at a time when the people of Bangladesh were going through severe struggles for their fundamental rights. Released just a year before the independence of Bangladesh, the cinema itself worked as a weapon in the process of revolution. Using the metaphor of a family, Zahir Raihan portrayed his stance against the military oppression to create political consciousness among the audience. Predicting the consequences of the cinema, the Pakistani administration tried to ban the film but failed (Ali, 2020). Cinema, especially Third Cinema, which is the most advanced version of political cinema (Wayne, 2001, p. 1) is such a strong medium to stand against the injustices in the existing system that it stands against the very rulers of that system. Under the Pakistani regime, it was challenging to make political cinema and it was just as difficult to do the same under the military dictatorship in the late 1970s. Rupali Shoikotey, as a political cinema, draws attention to this fact by showing the event related to Jibon Theke Neya. This can be deemed as a protest against the system’s interference in the freedom of the medium of art through the medium itself. Articulating that historical event in the cinema, Rupali Shoikotey reminds us how a cinema can serve its political purpose and how it can intervene in a crisis situation. It glorifies the power of cinema as an instrument of revolution; it glorifies the power of a camera in the process of liberation in relation to the effectiveness of the projector. Solanas & Getino (1970) deem a projector to be ‘a gun that can shoot 24 frames per second’ (p. 8). On the other hand, showing the production of a protest film in a colonial

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context reminds the audience about the importance of protesting in a crisis situation and Zahir Raihan himself becomes the symbol of protest (Junaid, 2017, p. 54). Besides, these act as strong evidences to the fact that military dictatorship always stands against the freedom of expression of people no matter in which medium it is expressed. Lenin stands against the unquestioning submission of the intellectuals towards the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan unquestioningly. In his writing, he criticizes the so-called intellectuals who do not ask any questions about the injustices and oppressions of the West Pakistani rulers. A college teacher, Mizan, who seems to be a friend of Lenin, comes to his office and makes an objection to an article Lenin has written about the principal of Mizan’s college. From Mizan’s dialogue, it can be assumed that Lenin has written something to criticize the principal’s support towards the Field Marshal Ayub Khan and his government. In the same article, Lenin also criticizes the then governor of East Pakistan. Mizan furiously objects to his writing and takes the government’s side, and tells Lenin that, Lenin cannot deny that the economic structure of Pakistan is getting stronger day by day under the Ayub government. Upon coming to know of the matter, Aslam says it is very disappointing that a gentle and educated man like Mizan is supporting injustice just to save his job. Sunil describes this as the biggest success of the Ayub government, as he has been successful in gaining the support of most Bengali intellectuals. Before independence, a large number of native intellectuals used to support the military dictatorship. For example, when the Ayub government banned the transmission of the songs of Rabindranath Tagore in 1967, 19 intellectuals gave a statement in the newspaper against the decision, but later, a group of 40 intellectuals put a counter statement in support of the government (Halim, 2004, p. 154). Shaju, an armed hoodlum, stops the car of a social science professor, Mizanur Rahman to kidnap his wife. Terrified of Shaju, Mizan leaves his wife and flees in his car. Reaching home, he makes

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calls to every possible number to save his wife, but none of the government authorities respond to him. Mizan’s wife is very brave and she attacks the hoodlums by herself to get rid of them. She is furious at Mizan as he flew the scene when Shaju tried to kidnap her. Later on, Lenin tries to make her understand that fighting with the hoodlums could make the situation worse. He criticizes the authorities as they are destroying the social system, which is now not able to ensure even the minimum of safety to people. Just as it was in the pre-independence era, in the late 1970s under the military dictatorship, the country experienced excessive disorder in the social system once more. Mascarenhas (2019) states that, criminal activities like robbery, political murder, violence against women increased like never before (pp. 164-165). Politicization One of the intentions of Third Cinema is to raise political consciousness in the spectator. For this, Wayne (2001) argues, a cinema must deal with the process by which an exploited or oppressed being becomes conscious of his/her real condition of life which makes him/her determined to do something about it (p. 16). Rupali Shoikotey, as a whole, tried to raise political consciousness among the audience. One of the title cards at the beginning of the cinema says that the cinema deals with the restless period of the late 1960s and of 1970. With this, the audience becomes aware of the context of the cinema at the very beginning. It makes the audience ready to watch events related to the political turmoil in the then East Pakistan. The cinema was released in 1979. In a very subtle way, it indicated the prevailing crisis situation of the country of when the cinema was made. Bangladesh was under the military rule before liberation, and just after four years of independence, the autocratic military rule was once again imposed on it. The only difference was that the ruler had been foreign in pre-liberation times, and in post-

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liberation times, they were native. Achieving political independence through the war could not ensure social emancipation at all. An exploitation free society was never established. That is why Frantz Fanon believed that only political independence cannot ensure the process of decolonization. For him, political independence is merely the beginning, and it, political independence, in no way indicates and/or ensures that the colonized have been freed from colonial values, for these values—which include aesthetic, spiritual, social, political, cultural, intellectual, and psychological mores and models—have historically persisted and plagued the purportedly ‘post’ colonial people and society long after political independence. (Rabaka, 2010, p. 123) Thus, through this cinema, the director, tried to make the audience aware of the events that took place in the country in the post-independence era in the guise of events that happened in a preindependence setting. When the editor of the Daily News asks Lenin to stop his write-up on autonomy, Lenin protests by asking him why he should avoid writing about the issues of survival of the people of the country. He states that no matter what pressure the authority puts on the newspaper he would not compromise his beliefs. He resigns and criticizes the submissive mentality of the editor. He warns that when the time will come, the oppressors will not hesitate to strike all the people of the country, regardless of whether they are submissive or subversive. This heated discussion between Alam and Lenin is nothing but to raise awareness among the people who submit themselves to the injustices of the system. This serves to show that in order to achieve emancipation, people need to have the courage to defy the system and accept the consequences. On the other hand, it might be a lesson to portray the fact that being submissive to the injustice never brings real blessing, however it turns into a curse either at present or sometime in the future.

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Political cinema aims to make its audience more conscious about important socio-political issues. To establish an exploitation-free society, people must have political consciousness. For this reason, political education is a must for the masses. Frantz Fanon (1963) understands political education as a way of “opening their minds, awakening them and allowing the birth of their intelligence” (p. 197). For him, it is “to teach the masses that everything depends on them” (Fanon, p. 197). It becomes clear that the authority always observes the activities of the people in charge. Alam asks Lenin not to argue loudly because even the walls have ears. Lenin, forced to stop writing his article, shows the ultimate dedication to his ethics, to his commitment to serve the truth by resigning from his job as the assistant editor of the newspaper. Alam seems to be worried about Lenin, as he warns him not to get into trouble assuming the authorities may be after him. This premonition comes true when we see Lenin being tortured in prison. Alam also cares for Lenin. Just after Lenin leaves, he requests Aslam, the editor of the weekly Media Front to hire Lenin for his newspaper. He praises Lenin’s writing skills but also mentions his stubborn nature. Through this incident, Rupali Shoikotey teaches how to stand against injustice, how to refuse submitting oneself to the authority even under extreme pressure. This gets even more emphasis when over the phone, Lenin tells Aslam that he is not the person to sell his political ideology to save his job. This also teaches that the political activists have to be very industrious. Lenin plans to take an entire day off to rest after a decade of working. The cinema also provides traces of Lenin’s industrious nature through his lifestyle as he works in the office, visits places for reporting, attends political meetings, even those in remote places; and still finds time to study philosophy regularly at night. The audience can informed from Lenin’s brotherin-law that Lenin reads the philosophical thoughts of Karl Marx,

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Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and also the writings of Ernest Hemingway and is currently reading Jean-Paul Sartre. Therefore, it becomes evident that Lenin is very much inspired by the left-wing political thoughts which speak for social equality (Bobbio, 1996, p. 37). Thus, a political film shows how to become active both in theoretical and practical fields. Again, Lenin’s political activities show how to implement the theoretical knowledge into the practical field. During the interrogation, most of the information the interrogator provides about Lenin seems to be accurate, but Lenin denies them, refusing to accept them as truth. Even while being interrogated under duress he remains firm in his words. This is another lesson of the cinema for the political activists. An activist may be tortured at the severest level, tricked through questions to reveal his/her attachments but he/she needs to be confident in themselves and should never be broken. The cinema also portrays the process of building political consciousness among the people through the character of Lenin. When Lenin was being interrogated in jail after being arrested because of his subversive write-ups in the newspaper, the interrogator highlights his activities in the previous years; his study in Dhaka and London, work as a journalist in a left-wing supported newspaper, visit to Algeria and Cuba, which they assume was for taking guerilla training, his coming back to East Pakistan and working as a journalist and his attachment to a political party which seeks liberation through armed struggle. Through this, the cinema introduces the audience to the development that Lenin had gone through so that the audience can understand the process of the struggle for liberation and become conscious about the oppression of the rulers.

Rupali Shoikotey seems quite critical towards capitalism. Lenin himself seems to be motivated by communist thoughts. Engels (1977) defines communism as “the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat” and proletariat as “that class in society which draws its

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means of livelihood wholly and solely from the sale of its labour and not from the profit from any kind of capital” (p. 9). Though Lenin denies himself to be a member of a so-called communist party, Sharmin’s father takes him as a communist. Sharmin’s father is a Bengali capitalist who owns a number of well-established business properties. If Lenin wants to marry Sharmin, he needs to fulfil several conditions imposed by her father. He wants Lenin to sacrifice his communist entity and quit his newspaper job. Besides, Lenin has to accept fifty per cent of Sharmin’s father’s property after the marriage. He wants Lenin to maintain at least the standard of living his daughter is used to. But even in this case Lenin does not cross the boundaries of his ethics. He does not surrender himself to the so-called personal heaven which capitalism promises, but he is ready to arrange the best lifestyle for Sharmin in accordance with his ability, as he is devoted to his ideology. He is so confident that he does not even fear losing his love, Sharmin. Though Sharmin’s father is not willing to let his daughter marry Lenin in his financial state, Sharmin is very eager to marry Lenin. On the other hand, Lenin never strongly expresses his love for Sharmin. He does not let Sharmin know how intensely he nourishes love in his heart for her. But due to his ideologies, he refuses to marry Sharmin in the end. For Lenin, the world is going through a very critical time. People have stood against injustice in different places of the world like Algeria, Vietnam and Angola. It seems that the present is working to destroy the future as rulers are preparing nuclear weapons to stop the revolutions. Even the rage of the people of East Pakistan is reaching the breaking point due to the repression of West Pakistani rulers. Lenin himself is also offended by the activities of West Pakistani rulers, which make him write against them. For this reason, he is also in danger of being harmed. In a situation like this, he could not make up his mind to get engaged with someone just for his personal happiness. Again, the cinema is educating the audience here. It inspires them to think as a collective instead of as individuals. A socially or politically conscious

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person cannot just think of his or her own happiness, they have a duty to their people, to their country. Lenin’s refusal to marry Sharmin thus works to raise consciousness among the common people. Lenin seems to be struggling with both outer and inner forces. Explicitly, he fights against the political forces; implicitly, he fights against his own emotions which is revealed through the poem he recites. It says that he is walking along a path, an endless path towards his destination. He notices someone beckoning at him from the side of the road, offering him a calm, quiet, peaceful life. But he cannot stop. He must reach his destination: the mountain, visible far away—on the horizon. And then he must reach the city of stars. This fight with the inner force seems to be harder. Sharmin mentions this to her father that, it is never possible to understand how alone Lenin is just by observing him from the outside. Here, the cinema portrays the sacrifice of a patriot’s inner and outer happiness for the sake of his country.

Photo of Che Guevara on the ring

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Lenin’s thoughts and actions refer to his anti-capitalist standpoint. His refusal to accept half of Sharmin’s father’s properties makes his position clear to the audience. That is why Sharmin tells her father that, not everyone can be bought with money. Besides, in Lenin’s second place of employment, at the office of the Weekly Media Front, there hangs an illustration. In that, ‘SMASH CAPITAL NOW’ is written in text, where the letters of the word ‘CAPITAL’ seem to be broken and have been scattered by the force of a human fist. There is a ring on the ring finger of this hand. The photo of Ernesto Che Guevara, a major figure of the Cuban revolution, is printed on the ring. The Cuban revolution was a successful armed struggle against the then military dictatorship in Cuba (Faria, 2004). The picture of the capital smashing fist, thus subtly expresses the anticapitalist ideology of Lenin and also the anti-government ideology of the newspaper office, as the country, back then, was under the military dictatorship of Field Marshal Ayub Khan. Thus, Lenin’s antigovernment position becomes evident in the cinema once more. Furthermore, the film’s position as an anti-military dictatorship cinema becomes more apparent through the scene.

Illustration hanging on the newspaper office wall

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The cinema initiates a number of political discussions in different settings. When Lenin refuses to marry Sharmin, he talks about the unstable situation of the country and the world. Though it is a onesided discussion, it seems to be a call towards the common people asking them to be aware of what is happening around them in the country and in the world. It is to say that a conscious person cannot just remain occupied with personal things; he/she must fulfil a duty to his/her society, country. Lenin understands the importance of mass collaboration for social change. In the secret meeting of the East Bengal Liberation Front, Lenin tries to make the unit leaders understand the importance of creating an exploitation-free society. For this reason, he emphasizes the importance of creating a connection between the political party and the mass people to set the process of social change into motion. He says that the process of building this political communication with the people takes time. The most important thing which he says in the meeting is that their party does not want just liberation. It is not their goal to transfer the power from the foreign exploiters to the native ones.

Lenin instructing his party activists

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Rather, they want to establish a society that is fair to everyone and free of exploitation. This resonates with Frantz Fanon’s emphasis on developing a relationship between the people and the revolutionary party to transform people into active participants in the process of social transformation (Wayne, 2001, pp. 20-21). The discussion makes it clear that the ultimate goal of the struggle is to establish a fair society, not just having the power change hands. Thus, this discussion tries to create an urge for human emancipation among the audience. Mizan, a college professor, becomes furious because of Lenin’s write-up on his college’s principal and the government. When Mizan was praising Ayub Khan, he makes a mistake while mentioning the rank of Ayub Khan. He calls him ‘General’, whereas Ayub Khan was ranked, ‘Field Marshal’. Lenin, with a sarcastic smile, corrects Mizan by saying ‘Shh… Field Marshal Ayub Khan’ as if he is in fear that someone would hear Mizan’s mistake about Ayub Khan’s rank and get him in trouble. This is nothing but the director subtly mocking the obsequious mentality of the submissive intellectuals.

Lenin mocking Mizan

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Aslam and Sunil criticize the compliant intellectuals of the country who support the government on any issue even when it is in the wrong. These type of people are found in every generation; they are obsequious, selfish and only think for themselves. Again, in the guise of the preindependence era, the cinema was posing questions about the postindependence situation. Under the post-independence military dictatorship in the late 1970s, some of the intellectuals played the same role. This is not to say that they unconditionally support the authority from their hearts, but they do it to keep themselves in a safe position. This is revealed in the cinema through the director’s subtle treatment of the matter. Intellectuals who did not fear to stand against the injustice were also represented in the film. Such an intellectual is Dr. Mahmud, a university professor, who was attacked by hoodlums for making subversive statements. In an interview, he mentions this incident and criticizes the heinous acts of the government. The debate and discussion among Mizan, Lenin, Sunil and Aslam and the opposing stances stance of the two types of intellectuals work as subtle motivation for the intellectuals among the audience of the cinema to stand against the injustices.

Interview of the university professor who was attacked

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Lenin initiates another discussion with a left-wing political party leader when he visits a remote village. It can be gleaned from their discussion that Lenin has proposed an armed movement to free East Pakistan from the oppression of West Pakistan. The person says two groups have been formed in the party on the question of the liberation of East Pakistan. The opposing group thinks that the idea of East Pakistan’s liberation is nothing but a conspiracy plan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. He adds that the party may have to split on the question of liberation because his group finds no alternative to the liberation of East Pakistan to ensure the freedom of the people. Lenin asks him to make a decision soon. He also criticizes the impotence of the left-wing party leaders in drawing the people towards their political views. He emphasizes on preparing for the armed struggle to achieve independence and criticizes the nonchalant behaviour of the left-wing party leaders on the question of independence. Left-wing politics has played important roles in different political crises in the history of Bangladesh, but it had never been able to gain widespread acceptance in the country’s field of politics (Alam, 1989, p. v). It could never reach popularity at the mass level and lost the least bit of support it had by the frequent splitting in the parties due to ideological and leadership conflicts (Alam, p. v). At the end of the 1980s, there were 48 left-wing political parties in Bangladesh, among which, 25 had organizational existence. They also belonged to different schools of thought as six were pro-Moscow, 13 were pro-China, and the other six were of centre-left notions. Another school of thought was the far-left or radical left, which believed in extremism (Alam, p. viii).

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Lenin criticizes this trend of splitting into sub-groups. He doubts if they have any respect towards the concept of democratic centralism for the sake of maintaining party discipline. He doubts that the reason behind the disruption in the party is more of a personal conflict than an ideological one. The person in discussion with Lenin supports his criticism, but he seems to be very passive, relaxed. There lies a book beside him which has a photo of Karl Marx on the cover page.

Book in front of the left wing political leader

When Lenin criticizes the left-wing political leaders, the person in front of him chews a paan (betel leaf with betel nuts) with a smiling face—as if politics is nothing but reading a few books and observing what others do. The director thus criticizes these types of politicians, both with the dialogues and the images. Through this conversation, the cinema points out the flaws of left-wing politics in Bangladesh. The cinema tries to show the difference between actual left-wing ideology and the flawed version being practiced in Bangladesh at the time.

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Left wing political leader chewing a paan

While discussing family issues with Prof. Mizan’s wife, Lenin talks about the lack of social safety, which lies behind the rise of the hoodlums like Shaju. Through this, the cinema points the audience towards the destruction of the social structure in the late 1970s due to the negligence of the government. It motivates the audience to question the reasons behind people being unsafe in an independent country. As mentioned before, Lenin faces trouble for his honest and subversive write-up in the newspaper. In his write up he quotes the founder of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In an interview, Bhutto had said that he had closed the party office of PPP in East Pakistan because he finds no reason for East Pakistan to be attached with Pakistan. No other newspaper had reported the interview as it creates a negative impression of the Pakistan government. The Press Information Department (PID) chief calls Lenin to his office and says that the higher authority in the capital has

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put in a query about the report. He warns that Lenin’s actions could be seen as lèse-majesté (treason, committed against a sovereign power). Lenin sneers at the discriminating and oppressive nature of the government. When the chief seems to be threatening Lenin to stop his subversive actions, Lenin laughs loudly and asks what the chief will do if the country gains independence someday. Most importantly, he assumes that perhaps the chief will continue his job in the same department and will threaten future journalists in the same way. Through this discussion in the cinema, the director again subtly touches on the post-independence situation of Bangladesh. With this scene, the cinema shows that although he is a Bengali person, the chief of PID is threatening a journalist because of his ethical stance. If the liberation movement cannot establish an exploitation-free society, which it dreams of, the same event will happen even after independence. There is no doubt that the cinema is drawing a parallel with the situation under the military dictatorship in the late 1970s. Even when years had passed after independence, freedom of expression was still an untouched dream as Mascarenhas (2019) refers to the controlled situation of the time which made people afraid of talking without inhibitions (p. 162). On the other hand, Lenin’s firm stance regarding his ethical views and the smart arguments he uses to debate with the chief also work to encourage media personnel to be courageous and tactical to publish the truth and stand against injustice. Lenin’s interrogation scene provides a strong and effective political discussion in the cinema. The subversive activities of Lenin agitate the government, and the authority suspects him to be a leader of the East Bengal Liberation Front, an anti-government rebel party. The authority arrests Lenin and tortures to make him confess that he is a political leader of the party and also to get more information about the party activists. But Lenin does not divulge any information even under heavy torture.

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An interrogator comes to Dhaka from Rawalpindi to interrogate him. The investigator says that they had a plan to interrogate him after taking him to the capital, but Lenin’s sister had filed a writ in the court, which forced him come here. He also says that he feels sorry for the torture Lenin was put through, torture that would not have taken place if he were taken to the capital. Lenin reminds him of the case of Hasan Nasir, who was tortured and killed after being taken to Lahore.

Lenin’s interrogation

The interrogator suspects that Lenin is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) because he worked in the Daily Worker, a left-wing British daily newspaper which was later renamed to Morning Star. Lenin denies this and says that he was never a member of any political party, claims himself to be of a one-man party, an existentialist who believes in radical politics.

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According to Jean-Paul Sartre (2007), for an existentialist, existence precedes essence (p. 20) which means “what you are (your essence) is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be” (Flynn, 2006, p. 8). Again, radical politics refers to the “politics, which gets to the roots of a problem” and redefines the way society functions (Pugh, 2009, p. 2). It works to “provide an alternative view of the world” in a crisis situation (Pugh, p. 2). Lenin denies having political connections with any political party, but he makes his political stance clear. As he is living in a country under the rule of an autocratic government, it is not possible for him to reveal the existence and motif of his party; but with his statement, he declares his position as opposed to the existing government. Though Lenin does not say it directly, he talks about reforming the existing government using the word ‘radical’. Again, by introducing himself as an existentialist, he gives a message to the people of the audience that the establishment of an exploitation-free society depends on the people themselves. It is a subtle call for the conscious people to act against the existing status quo, against the dictatorship, against the repressive government of the late 1970s. In the cinema, Lenin does not think Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the prime leader of the struggle of independence of Bangladesh, is a communist. On the question of Sheikh Mujib’s six-point movement, Lenin says that whether it is a movement towards the secession of East Pakistan from Pakistan or not, depends only on the people of province. If the people themselves desire it, no leader will be able to put a stop to it. With this statement, the cinema glorifies the power of the people. The interrogator says that the Pakistan army can stop the people’s uprising and there is a master plan set in place for it. Lenin is taken aback by the words ‘master plan’, but the interrogator avoids his query

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on this issue. With this, the cinema indicates the events of 1971, when the Pakistan Army attacked the civilians of East Pakistan to subdue their hopes for independence. The interrogator shows Lenin a book titled Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography of Mohammad Ayub Khan. When he picks up the book, his right-hand trembles and he says it is a tic. It may be because of the tic, but it may be the director’s mockery towards the thoughts of the president Mohammad Ayub Khan. Lenin says that the book shows that the president neglects common people and hates the Bengali people from the heart. Lenin adds that the Bengalis are the majority of Pakistan and hating the majority could be dangerous. That is why Lenin starts with the dialogue ‘President Ayub reminds me of the Roman king Nero’. There is a popular expression that ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’ which indicates to a ruler who is detached from the sufferings of his people.

Ayub Khan’s autobiography

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Lenin tells the interrogator that he does not want to be under a dictatorship because it is a disgrace to human values. He wants the right to say no to the injustice of the rulers; he wants the democratic right to live with self-respect. With this discussion, the director maintains his strong protest against the dictatorship through the words of Lenin. The cinema denotes the fact that no matter who is in power, a state cannot be run well without them respecting the demands of the people. The people of East Pakistan never supported military dictatorship, which led to the independence of the country. In the post-independence era, when the country fell under military dictatorship yet again, even though the majority of the people did not want it. This political discussion in the cinema seems to be a warning to the existing autocratic power in the state back then. By showing the book written by Ayub Khan, the cinema indicates that rulers are used to neglecting the common people. Lenin’s argument with the interrogator seems to be aimed at making the audience conscious of their rights, of their freedom of expression. It also tries to encourage people to think about the existing governing system, and contemplate on living in a democracy instead of under a military dictatorship. In a post-independence society, the cinema makes the audience politically conscious by asking questions about military dictatorship using the pre-independence context. Thus, the cinema initiates a number of political discussions which work to enhance the political awareness of the audience in different ways. Throughout the cinema, we see Lenin raising questions on different issues. These are the questions raised by the cinema to awake the political consciousness of the spectator, as Wayne (2001) thinks asking questions is one of the techniques in the process of politicization of the audience (p. 16).

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At Alam’s office, Lenin asks Alam, ‘why should I suppress the issues of people’s survival in the country, those who are being pressured by the government?’ and again, ‘why should we publish a newspaper if we cannot write about the rights of the people?.’ These questions attempt to influence the media to stand against political and social injustice. At the house of the left-wing political leader in the village, indicating the impotence of the left-wing politicians, Lenin asks, ‘to maintain party discipline, how many of the politicians have respect towards democratic centralism?’ and ‘what is the reason behind the disruptions in the political party; is it ideological or personal?’ These questions attempt to show the problems in the left-wing politics of Bangladesh and encourages people to become informed about the real purpose of this political ideology. In prison, in discussion with his family, Lenin asks, ‘does the government have the guts to arrest a real CIA agent?’ This question aims to make the audience aware of the real intentions of oppressive governments, which come into play in the shadows, whereas on the surface level the government tries to win the sympathy of general people with superfluous excuses. After getting released from jail, Lenin leaves his office for a few days as part of his plan. He goes to Inani again to make an exhaustive report on the coral reefs. While staying at the rest house of Mrs. Aurthis, Lenin falls in love with Ana. But Ana is committed to Anwar and still waits for him. As days pass, her compassion for Lenin seems to increase. But suddenly, Anwar comes back, and Lenin leaves the rest house. As he walks onward, the same poem is recited in the background in his voice. ‘A huge hill on the horizon, still waiting for me, therefore I am continuing through this endless path’. This refers to the fact that the journey to achieve emancipation, the journey to achieve this goal that Lenin and the people of the country wish for, is still not finished. The country and Lenin still have

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a long way to go before reaching the goal. The cinema ends with the last frame showing Lenin walking onward. This indicates that all hope is not lost yet, but to accomplish the long-cherished dream, the journey needs to continue, which also stands true for the country that is yet to reach its goal to establish an exploitation-free society. Though the cinema expressed its political views mainly through the activities of Lenin, the other characters also have important roles in this journey. Lenin is directly involved in the struggle of establishing an exploitation-free society in Bangladesh. Anwar is also involved in this struggle, but he is a representative of international subversive forces that are fighting around the world to get rid of the oppressive systems. Anwar had been involved in the Palestine Liberation Movement since 1962 when Lenin was preparing himself for the national struggle. By revealing Anwar’s life and activities in the cinema, the director lines up the international struggle for social and cultural emancipation with the national struggle regarding the same issues. This is emphasized by showing the real footage of international struggles in different scenes of the cinema.

Footage of an armed procession (revolution in a foreign country)

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Issues become easier to understand when they are shown in perspective of other similar contexts. By doing this, the director compared the situation of the country with the world and established a link between native and foreign status quo to develop political consciousness among the audience.

Footage of people in crisis in a foreign land

Lenin may seem lonely in his journey, but in the way of materializing his political vision, he has always been supported by some people. Alam, the editor of Daily News, stops publishing Lenin’s article, but he is the one who requested Aslam, the editor of The weekly Media Front, to hire Lenin when he left his job. Aslam himself becomes a big support for Lenin as his newspaper encourages freedom of writing and never interrupts Lenin’s work. Even after getting released from prison, Aslam provides support for Lenin to live in Inani. Lenin’s family is also a big support for him. Though Lenin

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is independent, he lives with his sister and brother-in-law. They support him in his struggle. Even when he is arrested, his sister was the one who filed a writ in the high court and tried very hard to get him released. Setting the spectators inside the revolution, positioning them in the place of exploited ones is another way of politicizing the viewers (Wayne, 2001, p. 17). The cinema mainly takes Lenin as the representative of those people who have courageous souls to protest against injustice and those who seek human emancipation through struggle. So, when he talks, protests, or when he becomes victimized, the cinema sets the audience in the position of Lenin. Thus, the cinema works to create conscious souls among the audience, which makes them aware of their real conditions of existence and suggests that they do something about it. Therefore, the cinema politicizes the audience.

Critical Commitment As Wayne (2001) suggests, Third Cinema is critically committed to being neither a bearer of propaganda nor an objective observer of the crisis situation (p. 18), it must seek human emancipation standing against the status quo.

Rupali Shoikotey holds a strong position in the journey of achieving emancipation and establishing an exploitation-free society. Lenin is presented in the cinema as the key searcher of that emancipation. He recites a poem several times in the cinema, which expresses his emotions, his sacrifices, and optimism throughout the journey he is on to achieve freedom. It says ‘Walking along through the endless path towards the horizon, where an enormous hill is waiting for me.’ For Lenin, this hill is the symbol of freedom. Again, all the undertakings of his life are

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the sign-posts of his journey towards that emancipation. As a journalist, Lenin is always committed to writing for justice. His ethical concern makes him quit his job at the Daily News as it pressured him not to write against the oppression of the then rulers. That is why he says that he is not the man to continue a job by sacrificing his political ethics. Though the cinema criticizes the submissive acts of some of the intellectuals, it also glorifies the courageous acts of the others. Aslam comes to know that some hoodlums had attacked Dr. Mahmud, the chairperson of the Economics department of the University of Dhaka. Lenin shoots the interview of the injured professor. Dr. Mahmud holds the government directly responsible for this attack as he informs that the hoodlums were supported by the then government, which indicated the government under the then president of Pakistan, Ayub Khan and the governor of East Pakistan, Abdul Monem Khan. Mahmud holds the vice-chancellor of the university guilty too. He states that the reason behind the attack was that he did not agree with the government’s economic policy. Again, he introduces himself as an ideological thinker and states that he is never going to change his thoughts in fear of the government. Thus, the cinema states that not all the people, and not all the thinkers have joined hands with the oppressive government. Though people in positions like principals of colleges, vice-chancellors of universities have submitted themselves to the government, people like Dr. Mahmud are still there standing their ground for the oppressed. It may be a perilous act to stand against the status quo, but this also works as the inspiration for the activists working for freedom.

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Lenin studying at late night

Lenin reads books of great thinkers who sought ways of attaining human emancipation. Again, though he is involved in politics with a party which demands the liberation of the country, he emphasizes on eradicating social exploitation more than simply replacing the foreign rulers in power. That is why in the meeting with the political activists of the East Bengal Liberation Front, he tries to make the members understand that the party does not believe in terrorist activities because these activities do not help in the movement of freedom. He talks about establishing a social structure free of exploitation, something which is not possible without mass support. This reverbs with the notion of Frantz Fanon, who underlined the significance of “developing a relationship between the revolutionary party and the people, so that the latter becomes a fully involved participant in the transformation of society” (Wayne, 2001, pp. 20-21). Along with criticizing the autocratic rule, the cinema also criticizes the political activists of the country who claim themselves as leftists.

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Lenin criticizes the activities of the leftist leaders of the country in his discussion with the political leader in a remote village. He holds them responsible for not being able to popularize leftist thoughts among the people and says that, after many years of the political activity, they have not yet been able to make their thoughts reach the common people. People do not even know them properly. He also criticizes the intra-party conflicts because of conceptual disagreements among the party members. He doubts that the politicians respect the concept of democratic centralism, which is a practice in which political decisions are taken through the voting process, and all the members of the political party are bound to obey the decisions of the majority. The inner conflict among the political party members also becomes evident after the arrest of Lenin. In the days that Lenin was being interrogated, his sister was trying to get him released. One day she meets Lenin in prison with her husband and a lawyer. Lenin gets to know that the authority will free him only if he agrees to sign a bond which will confirm that Lenin will never be involved in political activities again. Lenin refuses to do this. His sister says that Lenin has no obligation to rot in jail to save his political party because, since his arrest, no one from the party has even made contact. Moreover, the lawyer says, some are saying that Lenin was arrested because he is an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. This refers to the inner conflicts of his political party. The director also indicates the treacherous nature of some of the Bengali people through the words of Rashid, a co-activist of Lenin who was also arrested by the police. When Lenin asks Rashid if he knows the traitor who leaked their information and had them arrested, Rashid tells him that the traitor is not someone new. It is a 200 years old character, Mir Jafar Ali Khan. The same person with different faces, whose nature is to set fire to his own house. Mir Jafar Ali Khan was a mid-eighteenth-century commander of Bengali forces

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under the reign of the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj udDaulah. His betrayal in the Battle of Plassey ensured that the British East India Company establish their rule in the Indian subcontinent. Lenin becomes highly anxious about having such a traitor around him. After getting unexpectedly released, Lenin suggests that his group members hide in safer places and wait for a favourable situation to take action, in accordance with the decision of the high command. He motivates them by defining this as a strategic retreat as their opposition is in a strong position, with extensive information about the activities of Lenin’s party, even the text of their oath. Lenin tells Sunil and Aslam that he is not worried about this temporary retreat, but he is worried about the traitors. Sunil reminds Lenin that even Che Guevara was betrayed by one of his closest people. Ernesto Che Guevara, the revolutionary Marxist activist, was killed by the Bolivian military and though it is not confirmed, some assume that one of Che’s trusted emissaries, Ciro Roberto Bustos betrayed him and got him arrested (Anderson, 2017). Wayne (2001) also emphasized on Third Cinema’s responsibility to register “the significance of class difference within liberation struggle” (p. 21), which Rupali Shoikotey does through Lenin. Lenin refuses to accept half of the property of a Bengali bourgeois businessman, and along with this, he buries his emotions for Sharmin. Sharmin’s father had given him a condition that, if Lenin wants to marry Sharmin, he would have to quit his newspaper job and accept half of Sharmin’s father’s property. Though Lenin loves Sharmin, he refuses to accept half of the property of a Bengali bourgeois businessman because of his stance against the class difference in society. Unable to give in to his love for Sharmin, he decided it would be better not to marry her. Lenin wants to establish a society free of oppression, but that would be impossible to do while he himself is tangled in a system of class conflicts. If he receives the property, he

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will also become a part of the bourgeois community. That is why he sacrifices his love for Sharmin. Again, the cinema also worked on exposing the class enemies in the society as Gabriel (1982) identifies both foreign rulers or their native supporters (p. 15) as the enemies. In prison, Lenin says that the book written by Ayub Khan implies that he neglects common people and hates the people of East Pakistan. Thus, exposing the ruler’s mentality in the cinema helps the audience to identify their class enemies. Although Third Cinema is expected to address the role of women in revolutionary struggle (Wayne, 2001, p. 21) and struggle for the emancipation of women is identified by Gabriel (1982) as a recurring event in Third Cinema (p. 18) Rupali Shoikotey does not represent women strongly involved in the process of emancipation. However, it touches on the matter lightly. The East Bengal Liberation Front, which is preparing themselves for the movement of liberation of the country, has its women members involved in the struggle as well. Two of the unit heads who joined in the meeting with Lenin are female. Additionally, women in the cinema are shown in a more active role than in traditional films of the late 1970s in Bangladesh. Sharmin works in a cast management team of a film making unit under UNESCO. Another woman is also found working along with her. Although Ana does not have a conventional job she seems represent the active and modern women of the country. Similarly, her mother seems to be a courageous woman who lives in a remote place and assures her daughter’s safety and peace after their family tragedy. Lenin’s sister plays a vital role in the process freeing Lenin from prison. Her writ in the court stopped the authority from taking Lenin out of the country for interrogation, which may have proved to be fatal for him. Gabriel (1982) identified ‘armed struggle’ as a key theme of Third Cinema (p. 19). Rupali Shoikotey does not show armed struggle directly as the context of the cinema was set before the real armed

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struggle against the rulers. But it encourages the notion of armed struggle. When Lenin meets a left-wing political leader in a village, he urges him to prepare the activists for armed struggle. Again, the cinema shows some real footage of the armed struggle of the guerilla activists in different countries of the world to emphasize the importance of it. Lenin’s educational background, his professional reputation built on writing honest and subversive pieces in the newspaper, his political attachments etc. all refer to the cinema’s conscious position, which is on the side of the oppressed. On the other hand, the logical stance on behalf of this position ensures the critical commitment of the cinema. Cultural Specificity With the view of achieving social emancipation, Third Cinema is also devoted to seek cultural emancipation. Wayne (2001) characterizes Third Cinema by its intimacy and familiarity with culture (p. 22). Rupali Shoikotey also exhibits a strong emphasis on cultural production. It makes use of Bengali songs, literature and cinema specifically for a political purpose. Poetry is deeply rooted in Bengali culture and in the minds of Bangladeshi people. Our culture has world-recognized poets such as internationally renowned poet Rabindranath Tagore, the rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, young rebel poet Sukanta Bhattacharya, the poet of beautiful Bengal, Jibananda Das and many more. The people of the country also take poetry as a medium of communication. Lenin himself has a poetic mind. The poem that he recites over and over again expresses his thoughts, goals and represents his political activities in a cultural form. Lenin dreams of an independent country where there will be equality and justice. He believes in revolution. Lenin is walking a long path towards revolution, and he dreams that one day everyone else will join him to make the revolution successful. These thoughts are revealed through his activities and the poems he recites.

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One night while walking through a long urban road, Lenin recites a poem in his mind which is played in the background. The poem says, Walking on and on, without an end, on the streets of the silent city, late on this deep, dark blue night. The offspring of the city rest in the embrace of deep slumber, before the journey starts. Perhaps as early as next morning, in the flash of light—yellow, like the Kamranga (a fruit—Carambola) ripened in the sun, with the solemn rhythm of ancient drums, swollen just as the Meghna River swells in Sraban (a month in the rainy season), a huge procession will start its journey, and march on this mighty mountain peak.

Lenin walking through a road while the poem was being recited in the background

Again, when he becomes tired of his journey, the poem becomes his source of strength, as if it shows him the way in the dark. Though he loves Sharmin, he refuses her to marry because of his commitment to his ethics, his society, his country, but the situation weakens him

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emotionally. At times like that, he recites the poem, which says he has a far more important job to do; he is in the war of establishing an exploitation free society. When he is in jail, he expresses his feelings through poetry. As the period of his imprisonment grows longer, he becomes mentally depressed and writes a poem in his notebook. In the poem, he asks all the great poets and the revolutionary leaders not to let him lose himself behind the prison bars. He asks for the Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam who is known as a rebel poet for his subversive poems against the British colonizers. Again, Lenin asks for Sukanta Bhattacharya, who died when he was only 21 years old, but is known for his strong voice against the oppressors. Lenin also calls for Rabindranath Tagore, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, Pablo Neruda, Maxim Gorky, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. All the names he alludes to in the poem were of great writers and social thinkers. Through their writing and work, they always took stands against exploitation. With the poem, Lenin links all these culturally important people’s struggles with his and thus, the cinema uses poetry as a tool for cultural emancipation.

Lenin writing a poem in jail

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The cinema also uses music and songs as a medium of protest. In the prison cells, Lenin and his co-activists sing a song which says ‘We are not afraid, we have profound faith in our hearts, we know, someday we will be the winners’. The lyrics and melody of the song are quite similar to the song ‘We Shall Overcome Someday’, which is a well-known song of protest. The instrumental music of the song is played again in the background when real footage of the struggles in different places of the world is shown. Just after that, a Bengali song sung in chorus is played behind the footage. This is a song implying powerful protest against the oppressors. The song is written and composed by Salil Chowdhury, which says, ‘Bicharpoti tomar bichar korbe jara aj jegeche ei jonota…’. This means, all the common people who were unconscious of their rights have woken up. Now they will claim their rights and punish the oppressors who exploited them all these days.

Footage of revolution in a foreign country

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The director used Bengali and foreign songs as well as making use of native and foreign instruments to utilize both native and foreign music as the background score. Lenin loves to play harmonica. As he is walking through a village road to meet a political leader, he plays one of the most well-known patriotic songs of the country with his mouth organ. The song—‘Dhono dhanno pushpo vora’ written by Dwijendralal Ray means— ‘Filled with riches, grains and flowers is our universe/amidst them, lies a nation which is the best of all places/built with dreams and hemmed in histories is my birthplace/such a nation you will not find anywhere else/ queen among all nations, it is my birthplace.’

Lenin playing the harmonica

Again, the use of folk tunes played on a flute in the village scenes and prison scenes reminds the audience about the national culture of the country. In the scenes that take place at the Inani sea beach, a specific music score is played most of the time, which sounds quite foreign. Thus, the cinema maintains a balance in using the music of different cultures. This is very significant because the director seems to co-ordinate national and foreign music here. He uses folk music and

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Bengali songs to emphasize national culture, and at the same time, he introduces the audience with foreign music and songs. Thus, by using images of foreign struggles, he also uses insights from foreign cultures to intensify the cinema’s urge for social and cultural emancipation. Culture is highlighted in the course of everyday living in the cinema as well. Lenin was a student of a music college and he has a fascination with music. After resigning from his job, when he comes back home, his sister asks him and Sharmin to sing a song. As the environment seems to be dark and rain seems inevitable, Lenin decides to sing a song of Meghomollar raga (a traditional pattern of notes in music). Meghomollar is a particular raga in Bengali classical music which represents the mood and emotion related to rain. It is important to notice that the whole family participates in singing the song. Lenin’s sister and brother-in-law play musical instruments. From this scene, it is clear that music is deeply rooted in the tradition of the family. Because they are inspired by music, they have different kinds of musical instruments in the house, and every member can play some sort of instrument. As this family represents the middleclass families of Bangladesh, it refers to the society and to the people of the country, who hold a deep cultural root.

All the family members are participating in the song

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When Sharmin lets her father know about Lenin’s refusal to marry her, an Urdu song starts to play in the background. Sharmin’s father seems worried while listening to the song. Later, from the commentary, we learn that it was a Gazal and was playing on Radio Pakistan, Dhaka. An Urdu Gazal, playing in the household of a Bengali capitalist, who had asked Lenin to leave political activities, signifies that the upper-class Bangladeshi people implicitly support the existing autocratic government which had banned the transmission of the songs of Rabindranath Tagore on Radio.

Rupali Shoikotey also alludes to Bangladeshi cinema. Showing the eminent filmmaker Zahir Raihan shooting his last full-length cinema Jibon Theke Neya and including the political issues related to this cinema, the director has shown how culture has been a site of struggle which Wayne (2001) states as one of the key concerns of Third Cinema (p. 22). With the cinema Jibon Theke Neya, Zahir Raihan stood against the oppression of rulers, and this made authorities take steps to stop the production and exhibition of the cinema. Though they failed, what they feared came true as the cinema was able to build political consciousness among the people of the country.

Footage of Zahir Raihan on the set of Jibon Theke Neya

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On the other hand, Rupali Shoikotey also alludes to the Bengali Language Movement that took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Pakistani rulers wanted only Urdu to be the official language of the whole Pakistan whereas the majority of the people spoke the Bengali language. People of the then East Pakistan did not agree with the decision, and they had to pay a great price for this. Zahir Raihan’s Jibon Theke Neya dealt with the events of the Language Movement. When Lenin records the shooting scenes of the cinema at FDC, we see real footage of the shooting, and in the background, we hear the instrumental music of the iconic song related to the movement—‘Amar bhaiyer rokte rangano ekushe February/Ami ki bhulite pari’ which translates to: ‘How can I forget 21st February, a day stained with the blood of my brothers’. When Lenin argues with Alam, the editor of the Daily News, about his honest and ethical write-up in the newspaper, he reminds Alam about the language movement and the fact that Lenin was inspired to be a journalist after reading the courageous writings of Alam against the rulers at that time. Through this historical indication, the cinema makes the audience aware that controlling culture is always a technique used by the oppressors as Wayne (2001) said “history has shown that one of the first things which colonialism and imperialism attempt to control, in parallel with economic resources, is culture, where values and beliefs and identities are forged and re-forged” (p. 22). In the late 1970s, under the autocratic regime, the cultural arena was facing trouble. In an interview in 1988, Alamgir Kabir described how the film society movement was facing trouble in the post-1975 era, as the activities of the society were controlled by the creation of new policies (Kabir, 2018, p. 273). He blamed the anti-cultural attitude of the government for this and stated this as uncivilized and fascist behaviour (Kabir, p. 274).

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By reminding us of the historical events of the Language Movement, where brave Bangladeshis became united against the cultural oppression and established their right through a movement, the cinema asks the audience to stand against oppression. Lenin becomes surprised when he notices the interrogator’s skill in the Bengali language. Although he is a a citizen of West Pakistan, the interrogator speaks Bangla fluently. This refers to the fact that oppressive rulers also try to use the culture of the oppressed against them. If the investigator did not know the mother language of Lenin, it would not have been so easy for him to understand and try to manipulate Lenin. Thus, Rupali Shoikotey manifests intimacy with various products of culture, such as poems, songs, music, literature, cinema and also explores culture as a site of political struggle. As one of the key markers of Third Cinema, cultural manifestation in this cinema works as a means of developing consciousness among the audience to achieve cultural emancipation.

Formal Issues Third Cinema language must be an alternative to traditional cinema. In making revolutionary cinema, Solanas and Getino (1970) give importance to the employment of constant and methodological exercise of practice, search and experimentation (p. 7).

Rupali Shoikotey initiated several formal experiments throughout the cinema, which made it different from traditional Bangladeshi cinema. A self-reflexive approach, use of documentary footage, negative footage, still picture, emphasis on using natural sound, symbolic representation, all these formal techniques gave the cinema a unique demeanor.

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The form of the film Rupali Shoikotey is different from that of traditional Bangladeshi films in many ways. It works in a way that does not seem aimed just to entertain people. Instead, it used some techniques which made the audience perceive the cinema as a visual construction, a made-up representation. This approach is known as a self-reflexive approach in cinema. For Withalm (2007), self-reflexive cinema draws attention to the cinema itself using different cinematic devices (p. 130). As she states, a self-reflexive film is a film which focuses or reflects on itself, that is, on the specific film that is being watched. Various cinematic devices are used to draw the spectators’ attention to the film itself in the sense: lines of the dialogue, ‘marginalization’ of filmic means, and in some less frequent cases, to the showing of the dispositive, the technical device of the film and film showing. (Withalm, 2007, p. 130) In the cinema Rupali Shoikotey, when Lenin comes to know that the government is trying to ban Zahir Raihan’s cinema Jibon Theke Neya, he goes to the Film Development Corporation and shoots some behind the scenes footage of Jibon Theke Neya. Here the cinema shows the real footage of Zahir Raihan at the film set shooting his last feature film, Jibon Theke Neya. We see Lenin starting his 16mm film camera and then turning to the audience and coming closer towards the camera. As he comes forward, the subject becomes defocused, and from the following shot, we see Zahir Raihan giving directions while making his cinema. It is like showing the making of a film in another film. Lenin is aiming the camera toward the audience and coming forward, which works as a revelation for the audience of Rupali Shoikotey that they are watching a false reality, a cinema, which is shot by a camera.

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Lenin capturing Zahir Raihan as he directs Jibon Theke Neya

Again, by showing the making of Jibon Theke Neya, Rupali Shoikotey works to snap the audience out of the cinematic reality. On the other hand, Sharmin starts working with a filmmaking unit under UNESCO, where a woman gives her a description of her job; she would be selecting artists, contacting them and cooperating with the producer. Later we see Sharmin working in a shooting zone where artists were being instructed on how to perform. These scenes again refer to the process of filmmaking incorporating the preproduction and production stages. Rupali Shoikotey not only shows the production process, but also the cinema exhibiting system. One day, after coming out of prison, Lenin goes to the screening of a cinema. Sharmin, Kamal and another lady watch the cinema with Lenin. Thus, Rupali Shoikotey shows the film making and exhibition process and makes the audience familiar with the technical devices of filmmaking, reminding them that they are watching a cinema, which makes it self-reflexive in nature.

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Film shooting in progress

Rupali Shoikotey also becomes different to traditional films in the way it uses documentary footage and still photos. The cinema was made in the context of the late 1960s and presents some real events that took place at that time. In doing so, it incorporated some real footage as well. When Anwar tells Ana about Laila and his story related to the Palestine liberation struggle, some well-edited real footage related to the Palestine Liberation Movement are shown. When he talks about Laila, a young woman is shown walking. When he says that Laila was raised in a refugee camp in Beirut, a child is shown walking in a refugee camp. A still photo of a young lady with a smiling face is shown when Anwar talks about his feelings for Laila. At the time of his describing Laila’s assassination, the film shows smoke emitting from a building, people carrying a dead body, women standing silently and men in an armed procession.

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Still picture used in the cinema

The visual created here is the result of real footage edited in a way that represents Anwar’s story. This shows how a cinematic device, editing, can be used to narrate a fictional story by making use of some real footage and still photos. Again, the jump from fiction footage to documentary footage hits the audience’s concentration and increases the authenticity of the context and the messages of the cinema. The use of real footage in Rupali Shoikotey strengthens the cinema’s position against the political oppression through the visual representation of important events of that time and linking them with real struggle scenes of different regions of the world. This linking of the political struggle is done again when Lenin passes his days in prison, and a protest song plays in the background. Footage of movements of different countries like Lebanon, Vietnam, Palestine and Angola is shown there. This real footage points to the mass uprising against the colonial oppression around the world. The use of the documentary footage and also the footage of Zahir Raihan shooting on the set of Jibon

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Theke Neya helps Rupali Shoikotey overcome the formal barriers of traditional fiction cinema. Ana has a nightmare where she re-experiences her memories of her father’s murder. The dream sequence is shown in negative footage which was a new technique for Bangladeshi cinema at the time. This pushes the audience to come out of the illusion of cinema, and reminds them that they are watching nothing but a cinema, a made-up reality. The narrative of the cinema is linear, but it is different from that of traditional cinema. The documentary footage, used in the foreground of Anwar’s description of Laila, appears to be a flashback of past events. Again, the nightmare scene in negative footage is also a past event shown as a dream. The cinema, in its entirety is not a single story, but multiple stories linked in a profound way. Anwar and Lenin never meet each other, but their stories run parallel and link up through Ana. Another characteristic of the cinema is the use of symbolic representation. Lenin’s repeated poetry recitation is nothing but a symbolic indication of his journey to establish a society free of tyranny. The illustration hanging on the wall of the office of the weekly Media Front, a fist crashing the word CAPITAL, silently expresses the newspaper’s position as anti-capitalistic and antiautocratic. The book in front of the political leader in the village, which has a photo of Karl Marx on its cover, helps us recognize him as a leftist. But his chewing a betel leaf while Lenin was criticizing the activities of his organization, also refers to the impotence of the leftist politicians in the country. The trembling hand of the interrogator while taking the book of Ayub Khan represents the imprudence of Ayub Khan as president and the inherent instability of his position. Lenin and Aslam both wear sunglasses in most of the scenes. We see Aslam in only three places—in front of his office, inside the office

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room, and at the press. For the entire time we see him wearing black sunglasses except for the instance when Lenin receives Zahir Raihan’s phone call. No matter what he does, be it writing, reading, or walking, he wears the sunglasses all the time. Aslam is the chief editor of a newspaper that gives its employees the freedom to write about anything without censorship and this is the reason that Lenin joined there. Its ideology seems to be left-wing, and it stands against the ideology of the Ayub government.

Aslam in black sunglasses

It is not so easy to run a newspaper like that, especially under military dictatorship. He had to observe society from a different point of view, and it is not easy for someone to understand and judge the status quo when they themselves remain within it. Usually, people use black spectacles to protect their eyes from intense and blinding sunshine. The coloured glasses help to have a clear vision in the face of intense dazzling light. The black sunglasses may be the symbol of Aslam’s ability to look through a lens that makes him understand the

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real condition of existence and provokes him to do something about it. That is why he runs a newspaper that stands against the existing system. Lenin also wears sunglasses, but not all the time. Again, his glasses are not entirely black, only a portion of it is. If we look at his characteristics, we find that he runs after his dream to establish a new society which encourages democracy and stands against dictatorship. No matter what happens to him, what he loses or what he achieves he is committed to realize his vision. But another part of his mind seeks peace, the part of him that yearns for love, which dreams of having a loving family. But his political vision makes him turn away from his inner desire. In the end, we see him alone and walking again towards his vision. The two-shade spectacles are representative of the two sides of his mind. The black part represents his political vision which he desires to keep hidden. The more transparent part refers to his emotions, his feelings, his inner desire for love, with his inability to express those for the sake of greater good.

Lenin in double shaded sunglasses

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In many cases, Rupali Shoikotey uses natural sound instead of traditional cinema’s use of music in the background which Gabriel (1982) identifies as one of the styles incorporated by Third Cinema (p. 26). The director enacted several formal experiments in Rupali Shoikotey to overcome the barrier of traditional cinema, but, it was not entirely different to traditional forms either. It has also employed several traditional approaches. Gabriel (1982) identifies putting emphasis on collective characters rather than a central one as one of the styles of Third Cinema. But Rupali Shoikotey gives particular focus on the character of Lenin. Here, he is the representative of the people who seek social and cultural emancipation. Some of the other characters like Anwar, Aslam and Lenin’s team members are also involved in the whole struggle, but in the cinema, they just play supporting roles to Lenin. The cinema also used two traditional romantic songs. Again, in camera operation, lighting or editing, no significant visual style is employed, which can be marked as dissimilar to traditional cinema styles.

Distribution/Exhibition

Rupali Shoikotey was released in 1979. It was the time when the government was shifting from martial law administration to the democratic process, but the status quo of an autocratic system still prevailed. However, there is no evidence that the film faced any difficulty in distribution and exhibition. Although the film represented the director’s protest against the then status quo, it conveyed its message through the allegory of the pre-independence setting. This may be one of the reasons for the non-interrupted distribution and exhibition of the cinema.

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Besides, Alamgir Kabir was a prominent director and internationally recognized film critic of the time, which means he had an influence over the film industry of Bangladesh. This privilege also worked as an advantage for him. Thus, the film was able to succeed in its intention to convey its message indirectly. With the detailed investigation of the cinema, it is evident that the making of Rupali Shoikotey was a conscious political attempt to intervene in the critical socio-political situation of the late 1970s. Inclusion of specific historical events like the Language Movement of 1952, political and cultural struggle in the 1960s and struggle in different foreign nations against military dictatorship and political oppression worked as a process of building a strong base for the message that the cinema wanted to provide. Placing several political discussions and raising important thought-provoking questions worked to shape political consciousness among the audience. The logical explanation of the film’s message and its stand against oppression, the manifestation of the search for human emancipation, registering the significance of class difference and identification of class enemies, preference to armed struggle and addressing the role of women in the struggle of liberation justifies the critical commitment of the cinema for human and cultural emancipation. Through the use of native cultural elements, establishment of a bridge between national and foreign struggle through culture and exposition of the ways culture had been a site of political struggle, the cinema manifests its intimacy to culture and explores the ways of cultural emancipation. To avoid the intense rage of the system, the cinema employed a pre-independence setting to criticize the existing status quo of the late 1970s. Therefore, the cinema presented an allegorical protest against

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the social, political and cultural oppression of the autocratic regime in the late 1970s. The language employed in Rupali Shoikotey is quite different to the language of traditional Bangladeshi cinema. It enacted several experiments with film language. It incorporated well-edited documentary footage in several sequences, used negative footage and still photos, emphasized on using natural sound, engaged a symbolic way of representation and engaged a self-reflexive approach. All these worked to make the audience aware about this communication medium, so that they know that they are watching a film. The repeated break in the linear narrative through the use of these cinematic devices hampers audience’s identification with the characters and the situation. This creates a distancing effect which Bertolt Brecht recognizes to be essential to succeed in the political function of art (Brooker, 2006, pp. 213-214).

Rupali Shoikotey also employed traditional elements as it emphasized on a single character, used traditional romantic songs, executed traditional lighting and editing techniques. But it did so to provide the audience some space for thinking and getting them used to engaging with the new formal approaches of the cinema. It can be taken as an initiative to transform those dominant cinema techniques, which Wayne (2001) understands as a method of Third Cinema (p. 10). Thus, the cinema tried to overcome the formal barrier of traditional cinema, which Espinosa (1997) regards vital for revolutionary cinema (p. 82). Again, this kind of formal experiment was never seen before in Bangladeshi cinema and it can be assumed that the director’s own language arose from a transforming worldview,

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on which Solanas and Getino (1970) gave immense importance, for the making of Third Cinema (p. 6). Protest against dictatorship became the key statement of Rupali Shoikotey and because of this, it can be identified as a pamphlet cinema as Junaid (2017) stated that the cinema is a political pamphlet (p. 57). This can be identified with Brecht’s concept of Epic Theatre which “aimed at a radical pedagogy that would provide political education, cultivate political instincts, and provoke revolutionary political practice” (Kellner, 2020, p. 34). Again, the cinema can also be identified as a didactic cinema because the way it manifested political thoughts seems intended to educate the audience. Junaid (2017) also finds the cinema to be a didactic one, as the director expresses his political statement to educate the audience (p. 57). Moreover, Rupali Shoikotey can also be understood in relation to essay films, as an essay film refers to “a self-reflective and selfreferential documentary cinema that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction” (Goldfarb, 2016).

Rupali Shoikotey is not a documentary cinema, but it used documentary footage in a uniquely subtle way to emphasize its statement. It also employed a self-reflexive approach as a narrative style. Therefore, despite having discrepancies, Rupali Shoikotey is highly informed by the aesthetics of Third Cinema as it employed blatant formal experimentation to decolonize its language. In the post-independence era of the 1970s, under the military dictatorship, the cinema stood against the system and asked questions to build consciousness among the audience. It stood against autocracy through its form and content. The severe political criticism of the

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existing status quo in the disguise of criticizing the system of a preindependence setting makes Rupali Shoikotey a politically conscious Bangladeshi cinema which is highly informed by Third Cinema approaches and styles.

Chapter Five

Conclusion This research aimed to investigate the political cinema of Bangladesh produced in the 1970s, to understand the ways these films worked as a language of protest in those sociopolitical conditions and find the ways these cinemas are informed by the aesthetics of Third Cinema. In doing so, the research selected two films Abar Tora Manush Ho (1973) directed by Khan Ataur Rahman and Rupali Shoikotey (1979) directed by Alamgir Kabir which were produced in two different political periods in post-independence Bangladesh. The research employed a qualitative research method and did case studies of the selected films for detailed investigation. Textual analyses of the films were done where the content and form of the cinema were taken as the primary texts. The research used Third Cinema theory as a framework for the analysis of the films. Very few films in Bangladesh have explicit political content. The research finds that Abar Tora Manush Ho and Rupali Shoikotey are different in their form and content in the exposition of political thoughts. Abar Tora Manush Ho is set and made in the context of newly liberated Bangladesh, and it deals with the existing sociopolitical problems in that context. The cinema voices its protest against social and political injustice by exposing real-life problems, such as the rise of the black marketeers, smuggling, postindependence social unrest, deterioration of law and order etcetera. By doing this, it intended to show the flaws of the system. The cinema had asked its audience to raise their voice against injustice and work together for social emancipation since the very beginning of the establishment of the country. Terry Eagleton defined politics as the way of organizing our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves (as cited in O’Leary, 2016, p. 109). By showing

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the problems in the existing society and inspiring people to do something about these problems, the cinema performs its political purpose. It works as a strong voice against the social and political exploitation and expresses an urge for human emancipation. According to Solanas and Getino (1970), Third Cinema must fulfil one of the two basic requirements: “making films which the system cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs or making films that directly and explicitly set out to fight the system” (pp. 4-5). Abar Tora Manush Ho does not attack the system directly; instead, it is more interested in exposing the flaws of the system in an implicit way that works to enlighten people about social and political exploitation. However, it deals with issues which do not sit well with the prevailing system at the time. The system did not feel comfortable with the discussion of the issues, which resulted in the imposition of a sensor over the cinema. The cinema had to go through intensive observation before getting permission to be released. The indirect approach of the cinema was effective in getting through the inspection of the system. Solanas and Getino (1970) emphasized on the discovery of a filmmaker’s own language in case of making Third Cinema (p. 6). Abar Tora Manush Ho delivers political messages through a very traditional formal style. No formal approach employed in the cinema marks a big difference between itself and traditional Bangladeshi cinema. However, it transforms the traditional cinematic styles subtly to establish its stance against social and political exploitation. According to Wayne (2001), Third Cinema concentrates on transforming the cinematic language of First and Second Cinema, rather than rejecting it (p. 10). Solanas and Getino assert that the revolutionary act in a film is not defined by the form utilized in the cinema but the transformative role the cinema takes in a strategy of liberation to reach in a specific circumstance (as cited in Buchsbaum, 2001, p. 160). Abar Tora Manush Ho utilizes traditional formal style,

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but in its doing so, it includes subtle modifications in its treatment of the style which works to transform the traditional cinema language. Therefore, through the transformation of traditional cinematic language, in an indirect way the cinema stands against the status quo and looks for actual human emancipation.

Rupali Shoikotey employs explicit political content which refers to its stand against the existing system, but it uses allegory in its language of protest. The film is produced in the post-independence Bangladesh under a military dictatorship, and it raises its voice against the status quo by setting the context of the film in a pre-independence period when East Pakistan was under the military rule of Ayub Khan. The film criticizes the autocracy of Ayub Khan severely and thus subtly criticizes the then-existing autocratic regime. The cinema underlines the importance of mass movement in the process of establishing an exploitation-free society. It criticizes the oppression of the government, degradation of law and order, the submissive nature of the intellectuals, the impotence of the political leaders, the envious nature of the people and the capitalist social construction in its search for actual human emancipation. According to Espinosa (1997), a cinema that is committed to liberation should show the process which generates the problems (pp. 77-78). Rupali Shoikotey exposes the process that generates problems and works to shape consciousness among the audience about their real conditions of existence. According to Solanas and Getino (1970), a revolutionary cinema can not exist without employing constant and methodological exercise of practice, search and experimentation (p. 7). Rupali Shoikotey employs formal experimentation and creates a different cinematic language that have never been used in the dominant cinematic style prevalent in Bangladesh. A self-reflexive approach, use of documentary footage, negative footage, still picture, emphasis on natural sound and

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symbolic representation, all of these work to create a distinct language of the director which Solanas and Getino (1970) find very important in the making of Third Cinema (p. 6). Thus, with its form and content, the cinema protests exploitation and seeks human emancipation. With its allegorical but extreme political statement and innovative formal styles, the cinema initiates an interactive dialogue with Third Cinema. Politically conscious films made in Bangladesh did not directly address the existing system but with highly informed political messages, intervened in the existing crisis situations and worked as influential languages in the protest against social and political exploitation. The films are well informed with the aesthetics of Third Cinema since they employ strong political content and transform dominant cinema forms in search of actual human emancipation. Therefore, certain political films in Bangladesh express harmony with Third Cinema.

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evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vB‡fi cÖKvkbvmg~n : 85wU (2004-2021) 1. 2. 3. 4.

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WOMEN ON SCREEN : Representing Women by Women in Bangladesh Cinema, Bikash Ch. Bhowmick, 2009.

6. 7. 8.

Pjw”P‡Îi Mv‡b W±i †gvnv¤§` gwbiæ¾vgvb, Zcb evMPx, 2010| mywgZv †`ex, Ae¨q ingvb; cÖ_g ms¯‹iY- 2009, wØZxq ms¯‹iY- 2011| Pjw”PÎKvi mvjvnDwÏb, nviæbi ikx`; cÖ_g ms¯‹iY- 2009, wØZxq ms¯‹iY- 2011| evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î wkïi Dc¯’vcb : wkï‡Zvl g‡bvfw½i ˆbwZK I ˆkwíK cUf‚wg, W. †gv.Avwgbyj Bmjvg, 2011| evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Îi cÂvk eQi : †jvKRxe‡bi Dc¯’vcbv, W. Zcb evMPx, 2011| evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf cÖwZôvi cUf‚wg ch©v‡jvPbv, †gv. iwdKzj Bmjvg, 2011| evsjv‡`ki gyw³hy×wfwËK Pjw”PÎ, Abycg nvqvr, 2011| gyw³‡hv×v wkíx G. †K. Gg. Avãyi iDd : ¯§viK MÖš’, 2011| evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf cwiwPwZ, 2011| Avgv‡`i Pjw”PÎ, †gv. dLiæj Avjg; cÖ_g ms¯‹iY- 2011, wØZxq ms¯‹iY2012|

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16. Digital Filmmaking in Bangladesh : Potential Trends and Problems, Dr. Fahmidul Haq, 2012.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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22. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”PÎ msm` Av‡›`vjb : cUf‚wg, Av`k© I jÿ¨ Ges Kvh©µg (1963-2011), Ae¨q ingvb, 2013| 23. jvj‡bi Rxeb wbf©i Pjw”P‡Î jvjb `k©‡bi †iwcÖ‡R‡›Ukb, bw›`Zv Zvevmmyg Lvb, 2013| 24. Awfbq wkíx myjZvbv Rvgvb Rxeb I Kg©, m~wPÎv miKvi, 2014| 25. evsjv‡`‡ki †cÖÿvM„n : AZxZ, eZ©gvb I fwel¨r, RvbœvZzj †di‡`Šm Szgv, 2014| 26. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”PÎ wk‡í GdwWwmÕi f‚wgKv : AZxZ, eZ©gvb I fwel¨r, †gv. ivwReyj nvmvb, 2014| 27. evsjv‡`‡ki †hŠ_ cÖ‡hvRbvi Pjw”PÎ : AZxZ, eZ©gvb I fwel¨r m¤¢vebv, †gv. Avwidzi ingvb Lvb, 2016| 28. evsjv‡`‡ki cÖvgvY¨ Pjw”PÎ : D™¢e, weKvk I mv¤úÖwZK cÖeYZv, Rv‡n`yi ingvb Avigvb, 2016| 29. mvwnZ¨ wbf©i evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”PÎ : bvixi Ae¯’vb, Abycg nvmvb, 2016| 30. `k©‡Ki gyL, Zvwbqv myjZvbv I Aveyj Lv‡qi †gvnv¤§` AvwZKz¾vgvb, 2016| 31. evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf cwiwPwZ, 2016| 32. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”PÎ wk‡íi evwYwR¨K ¯^iƒc AbymÜvb, Lvb †di‡`Šmi ingvb, 2016| 33. wPÎ m¤úv`K ekxi †nv‡mb, gxi kvgQzj Avjg evey, 2016| 34. evsjv‡`wk wm‡bgvi ¯§„wZ RvMvwbqv Mvb, Avmjvg Avnmvb, 2016| 35. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î †cv÷v‡ii weeZ©b : wPÎKjv †_‡K wWwRUvj cyYiærcv`‡bi ¯^iƒc we‡kølY, †gv. †gvkvid †nv‡mb I Zvwbqv myjZvbv, 2016| 36. wm‡bgvi †cv÷vi : 1g LÐ (1956-1986), m¤úv`K, W. †gvnv¤§` Rvnv½xi †nv‡mb I †gv. Rvnv½xi †nv‡mb, 2016| 37. evsjv‡`‡ki wm‡bgvi e¨vbvi †cBw›Us : wejyß cÖvq wkí‰kjx, kvIb AvK›`, 2017| 38. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î †cvkvK I iƒcm¾v : GKwU ZvwË¡K ch©v‡jvPbv, ixcv ivq, 2017| 39. Iev‡q` Dj nK Pjw”PÎKvi I mvsevw`K : kvgxgv †PŠayix, 2017| 40. weeZ©‡bi avivq evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Îi Mvb : 1956-2015, wgR iæLmvbv Kwig (Kvbb), 2017| 41. Rwni ivqnv‡bi Pjw”PÎ : mgvR fvebv, wgR gvngy`v †PŠayix I Avqkv Av³vi Kbv, 2017|

42. Pjw”P‡Îi Avg`vbx e¨e¯’vcbv: weZK©, †bc‡_¨ Ges m¤¢vebv, †gv. Avwidzi ingvb Lvb, 2018| 43. evsjv‡`‡ki g~javivi Pjw”P‡Î mnKvix bvix wkíxi (G·Uªv) Av_©-mvgvwRK Ae¯’v: GKwU Zzjbvg~jK wPÎ, RqkÖx miKvi, 2018| 44. bvqKivR iv¾vK : Rxeb I Kg©, BmgZ †Rwib, 2018| 45. Avgv‡`i Pjw”P‡Î Õ52-i Dc¯’vcb: AbymÜvb I ch©v‡jvPbv, bvwej Avj Rvnvb, 2018| 46. evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vB‡fi 40Zg cÖwZôvevwl©Kxi ¯§viK, 2018| 47. Kv‡ji cwiµgvq evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf, 2018| 48. Pjw”PÎKvi myfvl `Ë : Rxeb I Kg©, W. gvmy` †ivRv, 2019| 49. wkíx iIkb Rvwgj, W. †kL †g‡n`x nvmvb, 2019| 50. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î b`x, W. AvLZviæ¾vnvb, 2019| 51. AvjgMxi Kwe‡ii Pjw”PÎ, dvnwg`v Av³vi, 2019| 52. we›`y †_‡K e„Ë: GKRb †i‡eKvi K_v, mywPÎ miKvi, 2019| 53. gyw³hy‡×i c~Y©‰`N©¨ I ¯^í‰`N©¨ Pjw”P‡Î e½eÜz, ïf Kg©Kvi, 2020| 54. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î mvwn‡Z¨i iƒcvšÍi I cÖvmw½KZv, jvebx Av³vi, 2020| 55. evsjv‡`‡ki gyw³hy×wfwËK Pjw”P‡Î †jvKR HwZn¨, Zvwimv ingvb, 2020| 56. wkíx Av‡bvqvi †nv‡mb, BmgZ †Rwib w¯§Zv, 2020| 57. evsjv‡`‡ki Pjw”P‡Î el©v, eiæY `vm, 2020| 58. Avgv‡`i Pjw”PÎ, †gv. dLiæj Avjg; Z…Zxq ms¯‹iY- 2020| 59. wm‡bgvi †cv÷vi : 2q LÐ (1987-2012), m¤úv`K, †gv. wbRvg~j Kexi, 2020| 60. gyw³hy‡×i cÖvgvY¨wPÎ I we‡`wk Pjw”P‡Î e½eÜz, ïf Kg©Kvi, 2021| 61. AvgRv` †nv‡m‡bi Pjw”P‡Î bvix PwiÎ, bvwdmv †nv‡mb, 2021| 62. Political Cinema in Bangladesh : A Dialogue with Third Cinema, Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem, 2021|

63. evsjv‡`‡ki _vW© wm‡bgvq †dvK‡jvi I mgvR Dbœqb, W. †gv. nvweeyi ingvb, 2021| 64. BANGLADESH FILM ARCHIVE : AT A GLANCE, 2021. 65. wmwU‡Rb PvUv©i : evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf, 2021| 66. evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf cwiwPwZ, 2021| 67. evsjv‡`‡k wm‡bgvi BwZnvm msKjb : 1g LÐ| 68. evsjv‡`‡k wm‡bgvi BwZnvm msKjb : 2q LÐ|

evsjv‡`k wdj¥ AvK©vBf Rvb©vj 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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